Jing Mei Two Kinds Essay

In Two Kinds by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei and her mother illustrates the crumbling of the American Dream through the failing relationship of a mother and daughter. The story starts off with Jing-Mei’s mother is revealed to be a Chinese immigrant with quite a bit of emotional baggage. When Jing-Mei was nine her mother told her she could be best anything and Jing-Mei believed her at first. They attempted first the thought that Jing-Mei could have possibly been the Chinese Shirley Temple but that quickly ended in failure. Over the following years, Jing-Mei’s mother repeatedly tested her in all sorts of field trying to find her hidden potential, but every time it always seemed to end in failure and slowly Jing-Mei started to think she might not be able to be anything she wanted. Jing-Mei starts to purposely fail expectations in an attempt to get her mother to give up on the prodigy idea and at first it seems like it’s working until one

day her mother watches another Chinese girl around Jing-Mei’s age play piano on television. Jing-Mei is then forced to take lessons in Which she slacks off for over a year only to humiliate herself and her family at her recital during a talent show where she turns the humiliation into anger directed at her mother. Jing-Mei lashes out at her mother and severs her relationship with her mother to the point where they rarely speak and Jing-Mei goes out of her way to purposely fail any and all expectations her mother had for her. As an adult they reconcile slightly, but is short lived after her mother dies. Jing-Mei realize later that in the end she wanted her mother’s attention, although she had used misguided methods of obtaining it through defying her and going along with her mother’s whims.
Jing-Mei’s mother came to America in 1949 after she had lost everything in China, including her parents, husband, and twin baby girls. To Jing-Mei’s mother, America was a place of dreams and hopes where you could be absolutely anything you wanted to be as long as you tried. However, for the majority of the story all Jing-Mei’s mother just wanted Jing-Mei to be her best illustrated in the dialogue between Jing-Mei and her mother after the mother had told her daughter that she would have to learn to play piano, “Who ask you be genius?” and, “Only ask you be your best. For your sake.” However, Jing-Mei holds resentment for her constant failures and instead of seeing her as the caring mother she is Jing-Mei’s Vision is warped into seeing her as extremely strict and stubborn. Due to Jing-Mei’s warped perspective, towards the end of the story, Jing-Mei’s mother changes quite drastically the day after the piano recital to represent a defeated mother. “It was as if I had said the magic words, Alakazam!−and her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.” Jing-Mei finally lashes out at her mother targeted the emotional burden of her past life in China which results in her becoming distant towards her daughter up until her death.
Mr. Chong otherwise known as Old Chong is a retired piano teacher that lives with his mother in the same apartment building and Jing-Mei while Jing-Mei’s mother exchanges piano lessons for Jing-Mei with housecleaning services for the Chong Family. Ironically as a piano teacher, he seems to be both blind and deaf to the constant mistakes that Jing-Mei makes first shown after Jing-Mei tries copying and then diverging from the note’s Mr. Chong showed her to play, “So that’s how I discovered that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing.”. Mr. Chong also encourages Jing-Mei constantly regardless of the performance quality as he is seen as the only one enthusiastically cheering for Jing-Mei’s horrendous piano performance, “The room was quiet, except for Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! Well Done!””. Although Mr. Chong has some obvious problems as a retired Piano teacher, he is dedicated to his students and helping them develop fundamental techniques such as keeping time, correct hand posture, ect. which in turn allows him to be a very neutral character within the story since he has no ill intentions, though some could argue he let Jing-Mei get lazy in her piano lessons.
Aunty Lindo and Waverly are seen throughout the story as the trouble making duo of the story. Waverly is a talented Chinese girl approximately the same age as Jing-Mei and is known as “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess Champion.”. Waverly is seen in a way as Jing-Mei’s rival due to their close age as Jing-Mei is constantly compared to Waverly as shown by Waverly addressing Jing-Mei, “You aren’t a genius like me,”. Aunty Lindo, Waverly’s mother, is known to be boastful of her daughter’s successes as in, “All day she plays chess. All day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings.” which turns out to become a catalyst in the failing relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother.
As a young child, Jing-Mei is seen as very close with her mother. Jing-Mei actually buys into the idea of the American Dream where she could be anything she wanted. The ‘prodigy they test out is acting as trying to be the Chinese version of Shirley Temple by getting her a haircut that ends badly leaving her with a Peter Pan haircut. They continuously test out other types of prodigy’s but with each time ending in failure something in Jing-Mei starts to die and her relationship with her mother starts to become a bit distance as she purposely acts aloof and bored in order for her mother to give up on the idea of her being a prodigy.
In her teenage years, after months of her mother not speaking of her being a prodigy, Jing-Mei feels secure that her mother has finally given up until her mother sees another Chinese girl on television playing the piano. “When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to Hell. I whined and then kicked my foot a little when I couldn’t stand it anymore.” Jing-Mei is infuriated when her mother forces her into piano lessons where she quickly discovers she can be lazy in her lessons due to her teacher’s slow eyes and bad hearing. When over a year passes by with the lessons her mother has her perform in a Talent show. At first Jing Mei is excited and or confident as seen in “It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist.”, but due to her laziness her performance ends up horrendous and instead of accepting her own fault she chooses to direct the blame at her mother. “I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so I could cry and blame her for being misery.” The next day, being temperamental she yells out “I wish I were dead! Like them!” Afterwards Jing-Mei continues to be defiant and refuses to try to fix the relationship between her mother and herself for years and instead continually rubs salt in the wound of their relationship as seen by “In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations.”. By the end of her teenage years Jing-Mei Successfully severs the relationship between herself and her mother with her rash actions and defiant attitude.
As an adult, Jing-Mei’s relationship with her mother is for the most part nonexistent. Jing-Mei was seemingly ambitionless as an adult where she refused to believe she could be anything but herself without truly trying anything but being defiant, “For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.” She also become cowardly as time progressed unable to ask the questions that ate at her the most, “And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?” When Jing-Mei is later offered the piano her parents had bought her as a present she sees the offer as a sign both a sign of forgiveness between her mother and herself and a trophy that she had one back. “And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” At the end of the story, Jing-Mei realizes that the two sides of her younger self had both been the same as they both has clamored for her mother’s attention after she played through her old recital song “Pleading Child” and the song to the right “Perfectly Contented”.
Two Kinds by Amy Tan was definitely an interesting read for me.

The first time I read through the story I greatly sympathized with Jing-Mei the way she wanted to be perfect for her mother but the only thing she could accomplish was a disappointment. However, when I read through the story over and over again, my sympathy slowly changed from Jing-Mei to her mother. Jing-Mei’s mother was truly devoted to trying to give her daughter an opportunity for her to be the best person she could be but Jing-Mei only went out of her way to squash any perceived expectation her mother held for her. It absolutely enraged me that Jing-Mei blinded herself with the frustration that she caused herself by thinking she had to be perfect when her mother only wanted her to be the best she could be. I was also angered by the way she in turn took that frustration and blamed it on her mother. Overall I was frustrated by Jing-Mei’s mentality that it was her mother who was the one to blame for everything Jing-Mei couldn’t achieve herself because of her own lack of

trying.