Exhilarating Experience In Amy Tan's 'Two Kinds'

Passport Please Arriving to the United States of America in a plane is an exhilarating experience. On the plane, everyone suffers the same fates: whether it be turbulence, bad food, or long delays. Once arriving at Customs, the real differences pop out when the passengers are separated into two groups: U.S. Citizens and Non-Citizens. Most immigrants dream of the day when they can step into the Citizen line, hand over their American passport and hear the customs officer say, “Welcome home.” To immigrants, being American equates to success, fame, and happiness. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” it follows the story of an American girl born to a Chinese mother, and their struggles to be successful and fit in. Is that not what most people seek? The pursuit

This holds true when analyzing the conflict between American born and Americans born elsewhere. Immigration to America tends to be popular due to the promise of a better life, a relocation to a land flowing with milk and honey. A land where one can do anything: open a restaurant, get good retirement, buy a nice house, or even instantly become famous (Tan, 254). Hollywood has distorted reality. Jing-mei, the narrator in “Two Kinds,” is pushed to her limits by her mother, who believes that if Jing-mei just tried her best she would be the best. Jing-mei was not the most talented child, and she never became a prodigy. She never became class president, never got into Stanford, and dropped out of college. (Tan, 260) This was a “privileged child,” one who was American born and had everything she needed to succeed. This is where conflict begins, where dreams meet

Everyone is unique, no matter how similar the lifestyles. Even so, in a group, there is something that binds them all. There are even things they prefer to do identically, despite their differences. Imagine a world where people that were raised in different cultures try to live a double life. June Hoyte explains that the only choice that some people have is to exist in multiple realities, that is, lead different lives, until those lives collide and mesh together (25). Successful people may be self-destructive inside, solely because of the internal pressures they deal with. They were raised knowing that they could, no, should do better. Part of them realize they could be famous, only to be torn down internally by pressures placed on them by misinformed immigrant