A Literary Analysis Of Two Kinds By Amy Tan

Two Kinds Literary Analysis
Children can be a handful sometimes and they each have a different personality and different talents. All parents have struggled at some point to understand their children, and all children have struggled to understand their parents. In the end though parents just want what is best for their child. In the story Two Kinds Suyuan is originally from China, but moves to America in hopes of a better life for her daughter. She believes that you can become anything you want in America and wants her daughter, Jing-mei, to become a child prodigy. After trial and error Suyuan decides that her daughter will be a pianist child prodigy. Jing-mei ultimately fails at this because she is trying to fail. Her mother then tells her that there are only two kinds of daughters. Ones that are obedient and ones who follow their own mind. A major theme of the story is the struggle

She moved to America so her daughter could have a better life. ¨She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls¨ (Tan pg. 405). Life in China was not kind to Suyuan and she wanted to insure a safe life for her and her family later on. In this sense Suyuan knows what is best for her daughter. However, Suyuan forces her daughter into many things. ¨Mr. Chong was a retired piano teacher and my mother had traded house cleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano for me to practice on every day, two hours a day, from four until six” (Tan pg. 408). Here Suyuan is doing what she thinks is best for her daughter. Suyuan does not even have the money to pay for Jing-mei’s lessons, but does all she can to make sure that Jing-mei gets everything she would need to become a child prodigy. Throughout all of this Suyuan never asks Jing-mei if she has any interests, which is one of the big mistakes she makes that damages their