Two Kinds is a short story that presents a relationship between mother and daughter. Jing Mei grew to a self-realization later on in her life after her mother’s death. In fact, she is later seen being regretful of saying hurtful things to her mother. However, after her death, Jing-Mei was determined to be successful, just like her mother wished for her. This is evident when Jing-Mei says, “unlike my mum, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me” (Tan 138). She decided to be true to herself and not take part in her mother’s competition with Lindo. In fact, she disappointed her mother because she failed to do everything her mother asked her to do. This is after realizing that her mother was competing with her friend Lindo on whose daughter was the most talented. Jing-Mei wanted to know who she really wanted to be in life, and not what her mother was forcing her to become. Moreover, she was caught in what she wanted to be and her mother’s crazy attempts of making her become a prodigy of things she never liked. The protagonist was a rebellious child caught up between the American culture and the Chinese culture. Nonetheless, after her mother had died, Jing-Mei decided to follow the American dream and become successful, just like her mother wanted but in her own way.Īpart from the theme of the American dream, Amy Tan presents a protagonist who is struggling to find herself, her identity. She was not happy about her mother’s attempts to mold her into what she was not. This is evident when Jing-Mei confesses, "I didn't have to do what my mother said anymore. Woo did not realize that she was driving her daughter away from her by forcing her to follow what she did not want. Even though she wished Jing-Mei well, Mrs. Amy Tan explores a mother-daughter tension throughout the story as Suyuan Woo strives to make her daughter successful in a brand new country with the new culture. A mother and daughter have to struggle to make it in a country with clashing cultures. Woo is determined not to let her daughter experience the hardships she had to go through back at home in China, which forced her to move to another country for a better life. Amy Tan presents a scenario whereby there is a struggle to achieve the American dream from an immigrant’s point of view. The short story Two Kinds is centered on the life of a mother and a daughter who are struggling to make a life in America where there is the clash of cultures. Amy Tan presents a story revolving around the American dream, the journey to self-discovery, and the relationship between mother and daughter. Everything failed because Jing-Mei was not happy about all the things her mother forced her to do because, all she wanted was to be herself and not to compete with someone else. Lastly, she insists that her daughter had to become a piano prodigy so as to compete with her friend’s daughter who was a chess champion and this also hits the rock. First, she wants her to become an actress which fails immensely, secondly, she introduces her to intellectual tests, and this also fails. Therefore, she does this by introducing her to a lot of things so as to live the American dream. Jing Mei’s mother had a dogmatic belief that America was the place where her daughter could become significant. Woo encourages Jing-Mei to become a prodigy and meet the American dream of being a successful person in the society. This literary analysis therefore holds the view that cultural conflict promotes rift in personal relationships as evidenced throughout Tan’s work “Two Kinds.” Tan explores this delicate aspect of diverse nation using sophisticated literary tolls. Their American-born daughters are the ones to negotiate with double (twin) burden of their American expectation to succeed and Chinese ancestry. Tan manages to bring out clearly deception of complexities in mother-daughter relationships but focusing on disruptive distance between mothers originating from China before communist revolution and hence have distanced from their native culture for many years. At the root of the story is protagonist’s interpersonal dissonance brought about by the phenomenon of mass immigration. The story is about a mother and daughter who abandon their culture to embrace the American Dream in the hope that anyone in America can succeed. Tan creates the romantic concept of cultural origins and touches on lost ethnic essence to reconfigure and radically undercut notion of ethnic essence. “Two kinds” is a short story authored by Amy Tan.
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