“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, is a short story about a young Chinese girl, known as “Jing-Mei”. The story begins with Jing-Mei telling us about her mother. Her mother came to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China, including her parents, home, first husband, and two twin baby girls. Mrs. Woo believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. She wanted to create Jing-Mei into a great American prodigy. The next Chinese Shirley Temple. After trying and failing at several things like knowing random capitals to predicting temperatures from all around the world. Jing-Mei decided she didn’t want to be the prodigy her mother wanted her to be. She promised she wasn’t going to let her mother change her into something she was not. …show more content…
The protagonist, Jing-Mei who is the person telling the story isn’t mentioned a lot from a different perspective only when being talked about by the mother and aunt when comparing Jing-Mei and her cousin, “our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jing-Mei was dish, she hear nothing but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” (Tan) We usually just hear about Jing-Mei when she is referring to herself. Jing-Mei is also known as a dynamic character. She has her epiphany when her mother dies and she realizes she never really saw her mother point of view or why she wanted her to be successful until she plays the song from the rehearsal, “And after I had played them both a few times. I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (Tan) The antagonist would be the mother. The mother believed “you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” (Tan) She doesn’t change her mind throughout the whole story she always believes Jing-Mei can be anything if she just tired hard enough, and you see this when she says, “Not the best. Because you not trying.” (Tan) The characteristics of the main characters support the central idea that there are two kinds of …show more content…
From the beginning when she went to go get her hair cut, Jing-Mei felt like maybe she could be this prodigy her mother wanted her to be but over time you see her internal conflict grows. She feels like this isn’t true anymore you see this when she says, “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good.” (Tan) Through the process Jing-Mei realized the task presented to her where not what she wanted to do and that is when she started to revel and finally exploded. Which lead to her external conflict with her mother when we tells her that, “I wish I’d never been born! I wish I were dead! Like
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.
I believe that Jing-Mei should have told the truth from before, instead of telling them later. For, this proves to Jing’s half sister’s unnecessary hope of seeing their mother again. If Jing would have told them earlier it would have been less heartbreaking, although it didn’t necessary mess up their joyful reunion; it might have psychologically affected her half sisters more than it would have done if they found out earlier.
Jing-mei realizes her mother was trying to help her out, but since their personalities clash, Jing-mei first believed her mother was forcing her to play piano. She thought her mother was setting up unrealistic expectations for her, when only she just wanted to see her daughter live the American Dream. She didn’t understand the Chinese way of thinking so she thought her mother was just being strict. Her mother wants her to be a strong, independent American woman. She just wanted her daughter to have all the opportunities she wasn’t able to have in China.
The narrator in Two Kinds is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant. Her mother believed that anybody in America could be a star. She believed that her
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
For many of us growing up, our mothers have been a part of who we are. They have been there when our world was falling apart, when we fell ill to the flu, and most importantly, the one to love us when we needed it the most. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, it begins with a brief introduction to one mother’s interpretation of the American Dream. Losing her family in China, she now hopes to recapture part of her loss through her daughter. However, the young girl, Ni Kan, mimics her mother’s dreams and ultimately rebels against them.
Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much
The struggle of self identity as she realized that all this while, her mother was right. Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese. Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” presents an incredibly interesting perspective of a woman named Jing mei who is traveling through her native country of china, embarks on this journey of self-discovery to find her true chinese roots. The opening scene of "A Pair of Tickets" is an appropriate setting for Jing mei remark of becoming Chinese, because the introduction grabs the audience attention. We are first starting out in the story as reading Jing mei turning from American to Chinese in an instant second of the moving of a train from one city to the next. The narrator
Amy Tan the author of “Two Kinds” focuses on the relationship between a mother and daughter. Suyan Woo moved to America after leaving her first husband and twin girls behind in China. The mother wanted to find her twin daughters but they died before she could do so. She left China and moved to America in the hopes of the endless opportunities. She remarries and has a daughter in America.
In the story "A Pair of Tickets," by Amy Tan, a woman by the name of Jing-mei struggles with her identity as a Chinese female. Throughout her childhood, she "vigorously denied" (857) that she had any Chinese under her skin. Then her mother dies when Jing-Mei is in her 30's, and only three months after her father receives a letter from her twin daughters, Jing-Mei's half sisters. It is when Jing-mei hears her sisters are alive, that she and her dad take a trip overseas to meet her relatives and finally unites with her sisters. This story focuses on a woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity.
The two pieces of textual evidence I have to support this claim are both from paragraph #67 in the reading. The first one is whenever Jing-mei and her mother get into an argument about not wanting to play piano anymore. Jing-mei's mother shouts “Only two kinds of daughters!” and then she goes on to say “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!” These two pieces of evidence from the text are crucial to the story as a whole. They are important because Jing-mei’s mother wants Jing-mei to follow the chinese culture, and play instruments, and to be a talented young girl like the ones on T.V. While Jing-mei’s mom wants her to follow the chinese culture, Jing-mei is growing up in america, and wants to follow her own mind, and she wants to do her own thing. This causes big conflict between the two during the story. So her mom does kinda force culture onto Jing-mei and that’s where culture is noticed, but Jing-mei also has personal experiences at school that make her want to express her own thoughts and be herself and do what she wants to do, making her not listen to her mom that
...r mothers death to meet her half sisters. While in China Jing-mei finds out that she did appreciate her mother although she was worried that she didn't and knew nothing about her. She also realizes that she did not have to prove her Chinese identity to her two half sisters, that she belongs to their family automatically because of Suyuan. After her trip to China she "found" her mother and stops feeling doubt of her and Suyuan's relationship with each other.
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.
In Amy Tan 's Two Kinds, Jing-mei and her mother show how through generations a relationship of understanding can be lost when traditions, dreams, and pride do not take into account individuality. By applying the concepts of Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter, and the three stages of feminism, one can analyze the discourse Tan uses in the story and its connection to basic feminist principles.
The theme seems to be about how the expectations of a parent can lead to resentment from the child when the child fails to meet those expectations. The theme is partially set in the opening paragraph with the statement, "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America" (Tan 1), and again in the second paragraph, when the mother tells the daughter, "Of course you can be prodigy, too" (Tan1). Throughout the story, the mother constantly insists on making of Jing Mei a child prodigy. In the beginning, Jing Mei is excited about the possibility. She even likens herself to Jesus saying, "I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity" (Tan 1). When Jing Mei realizes she isn’t succeeding, she loses hope and so chooses not to succeed. In this she resents her mother for constantly trying to make of her something she is not.