Jing-Mei In Two Kinds

In Amy Tan’s short story “Two Kinds,” we are shown how complicated relationships can be when one grows up in two different cultures. The story takes place in 1950s-60s San Francisco, California, where Jing-Mei, the narrator, grows up. San Francisco, and America in general is a place where the culture is very fluid and people are able to do what they want. Her mother, however, is born in China, a country, especially during the time she was living there, was not as fluid as America. It has an orderly culture in which you have to either be born into a wealthy family or marry into one because it is so hard to move up in society, unlike America.As we can see in the story, Jing-Mei and her mother do not have a good relationship because of these

However, she does not practice her piece properly. Even though she is confident, her not practicing her piece well causes her to muddle up her performance in front of everyone she knows, as well as her mother ,who is once again disappointed in her. Since she messes up during the talent show, Jing-Mei believes that her mother will never bring up the piano lessons again. Especially because this was a public humiliation and her mother has a big ego. Nevertheless, she is wrong and she is now on the course of having one of the worst fights with her mother. Two days after the talent show, her mother comes in and tells Jing-Mei that it is time for her piano lessons. Jing-Mei is stubborn and pretends she does not hear her mother, but her mother continues to bother her and the argument escalates to the point where Jing-Mei says, “Then I wish I’d never been born...I wish I were dead,” and shocks her mother(1238). As a result of this, her mother stops bothering her and stops her ambitions. Although Jing-Mei should be happy with this, she continues to live with her mother’s disappointment and continues to fail her as she becomes an adult. As she continues to fail, she still believes that she cannot be anything she wants to be but herself and is still too scared to ask her mother “why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse… Why had she given up hope?”(1239). It is not until her mother dies that Jing-Mei realizes that, essentially, her mother is ambitious for the sake of her being perfectly content with her life. The only thing Jing-Mei’s mother ever wanted her to