Cultural Differences In Amy Tan's 'Where Worlds Collide'

Culture influences majorly everything about us as human beings. The way parents raise their children cause us to have different lessons and beliefs than others in the world. For this reasons like those one’s cultural differences such as values, morals as well as experiences greatly affect their perception on the world and others. In the novel “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan is a story about a mother and her daughter Jing-Mei who are china natives. The main character Jing-Mei’s mothers’ perspective on Americas culture is according to chunk 1 is “you can be best anything” she believed you could be anything you want to be in America like open a restaurant or work for the government and get good retirement (page 18 chunk 1). The main characters’ mother is from a poor background and eagerly wants Jing-Mei to become a prodigy. At first Jing-Mei was just as excited as her mother to work towards becoming a prodigy. Jing-Mei’s perspective changes when the main characters’ mother would give nightly intellectual “tests” would consist of tasks like multiplying numbers in her head,

Iyer begins the story with expectation “they come out blinking, into the bleached forgetful sunshine, in Dodgers caps and Rodeo Drive T-shirts with maps their cousins have drawn for them.” While in reality, what they see is Koreans pilling into the Taeguk airport shuttle… which will take them to Korea town. “They see newcomers from middle east disappearing under Arabic script of the shahra.” These immigrants in America trying to experience what is it like to be an American and are expecting to see paradise; but instead they are being put into their own group based a race, realizing that America is not a united as they’ve would have