Two Kinds By Amy Tan Analysis

The author, Amy Tan was born to Chinese immigrants in the 1950’s in Oakland, California. When she was young, Amy Tan learned about her mother's marriage to another man in China, a son who died as a baby and three daughters, and how her mother left her children from the previous marriage behind in Shanghai after the Chinese Civil War. This served as the basis for her book of short stories “The Joy Book Club”. Two Kinds represents the central theme of the voracious love between mother and daughter and the arduous journey that one already has taken and the other will take both for herself and for her mother.

Two Kinds is a short story written by Amy Tan from “The Joy Book Club”. Her novels helped popularize Asian American literature based on family

At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. We'd watch Shirley's old movies on TV as though they were training films” (Tan 222). Jing-mei’s mother finally decided she would be a piano prodigy after watching a young girl play the piano on television. She hired her neighbor by the name Mr. Chong who is a retired piano teacher. He would teach Jing-mei how to play the piano in exchange for house cleaning services from her mother. Jing-Mei doesn’t want to learn the piano. Also, Mr. Chong is deaf and has very weak eyesight and can’t tell if she is playing correctly. Jing-mei is supposed to perform at a concert of what her teacher had been teaching her. Jing-mei has not learned to play the song, and does not play good at all. She thinks her mother would finally let her quit. It only encouraged her mother to keep pushing her to practice even more. Jing-mei is angry and frustrated. She has not told her mother she does not want to do this yet. She thinks that her mother is trying to turn her into something she is not. Jing-mei’s mother tells her there are only two kinds of daughters—obedient ones and ones who think for themselves, and only obedient ones can live in her house. “Then I wish I'd never been born! I wish I were dead! Like them” (Tan 228). Jing-mei vented, telling her mother she wished she was dead like her twin babies she lost back in China. Her mother is so sad she says nothing and walks