Two Kinds by Amy Tan

1835 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Contrast and comparison between chinese culture and american

Two Kinds is a story about mother-daughter relationship – Suyuan and Jing-mei. Suyuan believed that America is where her dreams will be fulfilled. She thought that her daughter, Jing-mei, would be the one to realize them. Jing-mei, on the other hand, was a confused child at first. She was led to believe that she can be someone. At first, she followed her mother, but when she felt that her mother was already forcing her and stealing her youth, she told herself that it was the end. The story is a clash between two individuals from two different generations and beliefs (Suyuan who basically grew up in China; and Jing-mei who was born and raised in United States).

The theme of the story has so much to do with Amy Tan's own experience – particularly her relationship with her mother. It tells the struggles of mother and daughter to understand each other. Though the incidents in the story never really occurred in her life, they were very close to reality. And she said in her interview that it was the closest thing of describing her life. Also, we see not only the cultural differences but the immigrants' need to prove that they certainly have a place in the United States and that they were as talented or as more talented than Americans.

I. Literary Approach

Biographical and Marxist/Sociological Approaches are the most appropriate tools to better understand the story. As aforementioned, Amy Tan's life is very similar with that of Jing-mei's. Tan was born in Oakland, California to parents who immigrated to the United States from China. Thus, this made Tan...

... middle of paper ...

...not reach perfect contentment without her mother giving her the chance to realize what she really wanted. The two songs maybe the opposites but as Jing-mei played them, she noticed that they were two halves of the same song. Suyuan and Jing-mei like the songs are pretty much alike, but still they make a perfect melody. It means that without the other, one can never be a better person. Both of them shaped each other.

REFERENCES

Amy Tan's Interview. Retrieved January 2, 2007, from the World Wide Web: www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/tan0int

Critical Approaches to Literature. http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2002/critical-approaches.html

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Two Kinds by Amy Tan. Anti Essays. Retrieved January 4, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/2219.html

Show More
Related

  • The Relationship of Mothers and their Expectations of Daughters in Amy Tan’s "Two Kinds"

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there is no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there is no one else. They have been the ones who love us for who we are and forgive us when no one else wouldn’t. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” the character Jing-mei experiences being raised by a mother who has overwhelming expectations for her daughter, which causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be.

    Read More

  • Conformity and Rebellion in Two Kinds, by Amy Tan and The Ones Who Walk Away

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tan, Amy, and Samuel Cohen. "Two Kinds." Literature: The Human Experience. By Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz. 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013, 2010, 2006, 2002. 386-94.

    Read More

  • The One-Dimensional Portrayal of the Immigrant Mother in Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies)

    1654 Words  | 4 Pages

    Justina Chen Headley explores in her book Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies) the search for her protagonist’s identity, Patty Ho, which is a part Taiwanese, part American girl. Headley displays the mother as a one-dimensional parent who is holding onto conservative and traditional Taiwanese values, and is imposing her cultural values onto her daughter as a justification for her strict parenting style.

    Read More

  • Mother Tongue by Amy Tan and Sacha Z

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin, Amy Tan was born in California to Chinese immigrant parents (Literature for Life 117). The story focuses on how Amy’s mother was always looked down on because she did not speak proper english. Amy had to grow up using different Englishes: what she learned in school, and the English she had to use at home which was a product of her culture. Amy strives to disprove how society thinks, just because someone has “broken” English means they have low intelligence or understanding. Even though society feels that her mother's language is “broken” her mother understands things Amy and numerous others could never begin to. Amy states how her mother reads Forbes reports, listens to Wall Street Week, and converses with her stockbroker, and yet friends and others can not understand what her mother says. So this proves that language in society is more than just communication, language is a social tool of measuring an individual's worth. Even when Amy’s teachers in school tried to steer her in oth...

    Read More

  • Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

    Read More

  • Amy Tan Overcoming Faulty Relationships and Self Identity

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    Amy Tan struggled with many issues caused by her dual cultures, which she expressed thoroughly in her works. Daisy and John Tan were post war immigrants and the parents of Amy Tan (Amy Tan). Tan was given the Chinese name An-Mei, which stands for blessings from America (McCarthy). To them she was the blessing that they had received after their own struggles. Tan’s father came to America after WWII to become a minister (Amy Tan). Even though it seemed like Tan’s life was running smoothly tragedy struck. Both Tan’s father and older brother died of a brain tumor when Tan was only fifteen years old (Wiener 27). In her works, Amy Tan focuses on the struggles that Chinese-American women face in mother-daughter relationships, their struggles to control their cultural identity and the tragedy that accelerates the broken relationship.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

    603 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the central themes in writing of the second generation Asian Americans is the search of identity and individual acceptance in American society. In the last few decades, many Asian Americans have entered a time of increased awareness of their racial and cultural identity built on their need to establish their unique American identity. In the book The Joy Luck Club, which revolves around four mother-daughter Asian American families whose mothers migrated from China to America and raised their daughters as Americans, we see the cultural struggle and differences by looking at their marriages, suffering and sacrifice, and their use of language in the novel.

    Read More

  • Two Kinds by Amy Tan

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ies, she goes back to the piano and finds two songs. She begins to play “Pleading Child,” the song that caused the breaking point of her relationship with her mother. This song, with its fast and aggressive melody, best represents the mother’s aggressive attitude towards her daughter. Then Jing-mei plays the song next to “Pleading Child,” called “Perfectly Contented.” It turned out to be lighter and slower. It is a much happier song. Jing-mei’s determination to be herself, “Perfectly Contented,” corresponds with this song. “And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (499). Like the ying-yang and the songs, Jing-mei’s relationship with her mother may seem disastrous and apart, but together they share a strong bond that makes them whole. Even though the two disagree, like the songs, they form one beautiful song.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Two Kinds Essay

    1516 Words  | 4 Pages

    Two Kinds by Amy Tan is a short story from her novel The Joy Luck Club. The main character of the story is Jing-mei. Jing-mei assumes the role of the narrator of the story and talks about her her past which is used to develop the theme in the work. The topic of the short story is mother-daughter relationship. Two Kinds explores the theme of parents don’t always know what’s right for their children and children don’t always know what’s right for them. Tan views the past with feelings of regret and remorse thinking maybe if she had tried hard enough her mom would have died being proud of her.

    Read More

  • Human Oppressiveness in Two Kinds and A&P

    2353 Words  | 5 Pages

    Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.

    Read More

  • Theme Of A Pair Of Tickets

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    When she arrives, she feels somehow proud to be Chinese. But her main reason why she went back home is to reflect her mother past life on her present life. Through the setting and her relatives, Jing Mei learns the nature of Chinese American culture. The main setting takes place in China, effects of the main character’s point of view through changing her sense of culture and identity. The time period plays a large role on the story, there is disconnect between the mother and daughter who came from different culture. In “A Pair of Tickets”, we learn it’s a first person narrator, we also learn detail of what the narrator is thinking about, detail of her past and how life compared to China and the US are very different. The theme is associated with the motherland and also has to deal with her mother’s death and half sisters. Her imagination of her sister transforming into adult, she also expected them to dresses and talk different. She also saw herself transforming, the DNA of Chinese running through her blood. In her own mind, from a distance she thinks Shanghai, the city of China looks like a major American city. Amy Tan used positive imagery of consumerism to drive home her themes of culture and identity, discovering her ancestral

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author. She had become Americanized, according to her mother, who still held traditional Chinese values. They fought sometimes, just as the women and daughters of The Joy Luck Club, over who was right and who was wrong regarding many problems they encountered. Tan most likely modeled The Joy Luck Club after her relationship with her mother. She even dedicated the novel “To my mother and the memory of her mother. You asked me once what I wo...

    Read More

  • Conflicting Points of View in Two Kinds by Amy Tan

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about a mother and daughter who have strong conflicting ideas about what it means to have a sense of self. This may be partly due to the mother growing up in China, which is a very different culture than the American culture where endless opportunities are available to anyone who wants to pursue them. Jing-mei's mother wants her daughter to be the best, a prodigy of sorts, and to have the kind of life, full of hopes and dreams that she did not have. In the beginning of the story Jing-mei liked the idea of becoming a prodigy however, the prodigy in her became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good." It warned. "And then you'll always be nothing" (500). After disappointing her mother several times Jing-mei started to detest the idea of becoming a prodigy. The idea Jing-mei's mother had for her to become a prodigy was too much pressure for a small child and was something that Jing-mei was clearly not ready to be. As a result the pressure that her mother laid upon her only made Jing-mei rebel against her mother and she resisted in giving her best. Jing-mei did this because she only wanted her mother's love and acceptance for who she was not only what she could become. Furthermore, Jing-mei's point of view of being the kind of person that one can be proud of was very different from her mother's point of view.

    Read More

  • Conflict And Conflicts In Two Kinds, By Amy Tan

    819 Words  | 2 Pages

    From the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had their conflicts, tested each other’s patience, and eventually resolved their conflicts. In the story “Two Kinds,” written by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei and her mother are the typical mother-daughter duo that have their fair share of trials. Jing-Mei is an American Chinese Girl who struggles to please her mother by trying to be the “Prodigy” that her mother wishes for. Her mother has great ideas to make her daughter famous with hopes that she would become the best at everything she did. Throughout the story, the mother and daughter display distinct characteristics giving the reader insight of who they are, how they each handle conflict, and helps define how their relationship changes over time.

    Read More

More about Two Kinds by Amy Tan

Open Document