Amy Tan s Two Kinds Essay - 1372 Words

Jing-Mei Woo and her mother are the major characters in Amy Tan’s â€Å"Two Kinds.† The two have a complicated mother-daughter relationship at the beginning of the story, but later, as an adult, Jing-Mei realizes the intentions of her mother. â€Å"Two Kinds† is told from Jing-Mei’s point of view as a mature adult who is reflecting on her childhood. Jing-Mei’s thoughts and feelings are revealed, but she and her mother, the antagonist, have conflictingly opposite desires. Jing-Mei’s mother desires for her daughter to live the American dream and become an obedient â€Å"prodigy† child by forcing many prestigious tasks upon her, although Jing-Mei desires to please her mother, she wants live a normal life and chooses to rebel against her mother’s wishes. The strong determination that both Jing-Mei and her mother possess lead to two strongly different views on the life Jing-Mei desires to live. Jing-Mei’s mother wants her daughter to be a perfect child and have a successful life. She pushes her to be someone that Jing-Mei has no desire to be. Jing-Mei longs to be an ordinary child and live a normal life. She does not wish to have her mother pushing her to do tasks that are impossible for her. Jing-Mei hates to let her mother down, but she later becomes frustrated and says that she will not allow her mother to transform her. She says that she will be the ordinary child that she dreamed of becoming. â€Å"Two Kinds† is an important tile for this story. Jing-Mei’s mother tells her thereShow MoreRelatedAmy Tan s Two Kinds1663 Words   |  7 Pagessometimes they overestimate their children’s potential and put a lot of expectations on them. In Asia, such as Japan, China, and South Korea, these expectations become burdens for the children, which may lead them to become rebels. The story â€Å"Two Kinds† of Amy Tan will illustrate Asia parents’ expectation througho ut the aspects of the educational system, parental involvement, and single-child family as well as the gender issue. Most Asian countries’ education has been influenced by the philosophy ofRead MoreAmy Tan s Two Kinds991 Words   |  4 Pagesfor both genders, historically speaking, women have faced significantly more repercussions. In Amy Tan’s, Two Kinds, the theme of feminine oppression is represented by the symbolism of the song in which the main character, Ni kan, must recite as a child. The song she recites is called â€Å"Pleading Child† and she only realizes that the song has a second half called â€Å"Perfectly Contented† until adulthood. The two contrasting pieces of music represent the defiance of women to standards of femininity set byRead MoreAmy Tan s Two Kinds869 Words   |  4 PagesIn Amy Tan’s â€Å"Two Kinds† Jin-Mei mother had dreams as she was coming to America. â€Å"My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could bu y a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous† (Tan 377). She is not alone. There are many people who come to America to make all these dreams come true. They all come with their children with the hopeRead MoreBharati Mukherjee s Two Kinds By Amy Tan1119 Words   |  5 Pagesaesthetics and ethnicity.In the novel,†Two Kinds† by Amy Tan, shows the conflict between a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother forces her daughter into activities so she can have an American dream.In the short story,†By Any Other Name†by Santha Ramu Rau refutes that two girls name shouldn’t matter and ethnicity shouldn’t be the reason why people should mistreat them. Bharati Mukherjee’s personal essay,†Two ways to belong in America â€Å" is about two sisters that moved to the United StatesRead MoreAnalysis Of Amy Tan s Two Kinds984 Words   |  4 PagesBig Mistake â€Å"It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me† (Tan 327). Growing up with a mother like mine, disappointment came very easily. In Amy Tan’s â€Å"Two Kinds† the mother and daughter were always on edge because the mother expected too much and the daughter could never meet up to the standards that she had set. After thirty years went by after their big falling out the mother gives the daughter a piano as a sign of forgiveness, but the daughter has a remaining feeling of guilt forRead MoreAnalysis Of Two Kinds By Amy Tan1567 Words   |  7 Pages One of the most complex relationships is that of a mother and daughter. Amy Tan is an author who writes about her life growing up as an Asian-American in Chinatown. Her novel The Joy Luck Club is a series of short stories about Chinese mothers and their assimilated daughters. One of these stories is â€Å"Two Kinds,† which looks into the life of Jing-Mei Woo and her struggle to gain a sense of self. Some key themes in The Joy Luck Club are the generational and intercultural differences among Chinese-AmericanRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan1192 Words   |  5 Pagesof women has drastically changed throughout the ages. (CIS) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan portrays life in America and in China in the 1930’s for women. (GS1) When stories are true, there is more power behind them. (GS2) Novels need accuracy for the book to have feeling. (GS3) A rave-worthy novel needs truth to really draw the reader in. (thesis) Author Amy Tan accurately portrays life for Chinese women in the 1930’s and it enhances the power of the novel because the stories have true roots, the accuracyRead MoreRules Of The Game, Fish Cheeks, And Two Kinds1395 Words   |  6 Pages In Amy tans short stories Rules of the Game, Fish Cheeks, and Two Kinds part of the novel the Joys Luck Club uses topics concerning the limits and connections in the relationships between mothers and their daughters. I n an Asian society, especially Chinese society assumes a vital part in every one of the three short stories, giving the primary conflict an interesting plot. Amy Tans short stories for the most part depict the inconveniences and strain between Chinese immigrant moms and their AmericanizedRead MoreThe Two Kinds By Amy Tan1272 Words   |  6 Pagesgeneration immigrants, experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society† (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of â€Å"Two Kinds†, and the young character in the story both are a second generation immigrants, who have struggled in their life with parents, about the culture they assimilating and their real culture. In the â€Å"Two Kinds† story the author illustrates the struggle between her American cultural identity, and her mother’s Chinese culture, as like the charactersRead More`` Two Kinds `` By Amy Tan And The Rocking Horse Winner Essay1458 Words   |  6 Pages The Cusp of Success A common theme we see in the two stories, â€Å"Two Kinds† by Amy Tan, and â€Å"The Rocking Horse-Winner† by D.H Lawrence is the detrimental effects that a forcing a bar of success can have on developing adolescents. Recognizing that the product of success is generally good, clouds the notion that there is in fact a wide range of effects that chasing success can bring about. Some of these effects have positive repercussions, teaching adolescents discipline and work ethic. However, some