A Painful Childhood Experience Essay

She says, “You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch [your life]. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do?” This question is important as it shows the helplessness An-Mei feels. She asks her question to reveal that she may be able to close her eyes, but she cannot completely numb the agony in her life. Tan also uses rhetorical questions when she admits, “I can still hear what happened more than sixty years ago.” Even though she tried to block out the pain from her life, she will feel it in her heart forever. This once again shows how women living the Chinese way are stuck in a cycle of pain.

The courage that An-Mei learns and is formed by ultimately affects her daughter, Rose. An-Mei states, “Even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way!” (241) when she is talking about her own upbringing, as she was raised to “desire nothing, to swallow people’s misery, to eat [her] own bitterness.” (241) This shows that despite her courage, she still passed on her passiveness to her daughter. However, it is also seen that like her mother, Rose has two instances of incredible courage that parallel her mother’s. The first is when she dates and eventually marries Ted despite her mother and mother-in-law’s opposition; “In those early months, we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of anything

Furthermore, the author explores the tone of the novel by providing specific details. In An-mei's childhood story, the author chooses to describe the pain An-mei feels as the soup pours over her by providing details of the twinge. She describes it as "the kind of pain [specially] terrible that a little child should never remember it" and how it still remains "in [An-mei's] skin's memory" (Tan 39). By depicting these details of the pain, Tan expresses the feeling of misery An-mei feels, which appends to the melancholy tone. Additionally, in the story of Ying-ying's first marriage, the author presents explicit details of the emptiness Ying-ying feels by portraying details of her as "a tiger that neither pounce[s] nor lay[s] waiting between the trees" and "an unseen spirit" (Tan 285). This emptiness Ying-ying feels seems to indicate the melancholy tone that appears noticeable in the novel. Clearly, the details Amy Tan chooses to describe in the novel seem to specify the somber tone.

However years later, she was grown up enough to understand and realize her mother's love for her. In the last sentence of story, she wrote ,“[a]nd after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song” (105) Jing-Mei understood and rediscovered why her mother gave pressure on her.

During one of the first examples in the novel, An-Mei sacrificed her own blood and tears for her mother because it was her way of showing

An-Mei spent her childhood without her mother. After her father passed, An-Mei’s mother became the third concubine to a rich man and was excommunicated from the family. An-mei proceeded to live with her uncle. That is, until her grandmother, Popo, began to die. An-Mei’s mother returned, and once Popo passed, An-Mei left to live with her mother. Her uncle called her “‘Swanle!’ -Finished!- ‘She is already changed’” (Tan 243). An-Mei living without her mother can be

In her short story "Two Kinds," Amy Tan utilizes the daughter's point of view to share a mother's attempts to control her daughter's hopes and dreams, providing a further understanding of how their relationship sours. The daughter has grown into a young woman and is telling the story of her coming of age in a family that had emigrated from China. In particular, she tells that her mother's attempted parental guidance was dominated by foolish hopes and dreams. This double perspective allows both the naivety of a young girl trying to identify herself and the hindsight and judgment of a mature woman.

An-mei and Rose have similar character development in that Rose’s character development aided her relationship with An-mei. In “Scar” and “Magpies,” An-mei reveals how she was taught to desire nothing and swallow her tears. Because of her experience with a deceptive, multi-wife household and her mother’s suicide, An-mei taught Rose the opposite of this Chinese way. However, An-mei realizes that Rose came out the same way regardless of her teachings (page 215). An-mei tells Rose that Rose was born without wood and would bend to listen to other people if she was not careful (page 191). Rose grows up believing everything her mother says and is prone to nightmares led by Mr. Chou. In Rose’s failed marriage, she does not make any decisions and just lets things happen. Rose finally takes a look at

Unfortunately, there are children everywhere who endure a form of abuse. Some experience emotional abuse while others experience physical abuse. Other children, like Dave Pelzer, are faced with both. Dave had to grow up in a family of two alcoholic parents. He was severely beaten and tortured by his mother and was neglected by his father. Dave had to spend his childhood in fear of his life. Although sad, his story gives others hope that they too can experience an abusive childhood and live to tell about it.

Jing-Mei feels differently though, “Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to. I could only be me,” (359/80) and she was correct for she had no natural musical talent. Jing-Mei has a desire to please her mother, but an even stronger one to choose her own life. She pacifies her mother by going to piano lessons but puts in no effort. Jing-Mei is “…determined to put a stop to her blind foolishness,” (356/48) but her mother’s desire to create a prodigy to compete with Aunt Lindo’s daughter, keeps her focused on the impossible. That is, until Jing-Mei escalates this conflict to its breaking point in rebellion. Stunning her mother, she shouts “Then I wish I’d never been born! I wish I were dead! Like them,” (359/77) referring to the twin daughters her mother lost in China. Sadly, the mother’s desire to have Jing-Mei conform to her expectations creates a constant battle between mother and daughter, and, in rejecting those expectations, seeing disappointment in her mother’s face all too often causes Jing-Mei to feel, “something inside me began to die” (353/18).

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

Primarily, Tan establishes the theme of the story through characterization. The protagonist, Jing-mei, finds it difficult to live up to the high expectations her mother has set for her. After seeing so much disappointment in her mother’s face, Jine-mei “look[s] in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when [she] saw only [her] face staring back – and that it would always be this ordinary face – she began to cry” (Tan 2). This bring Jing-mei and her mother into conflict with Jing-mei eventually screaming at her mother that “‘[she] wish[ed] she were dead. Like them’” (Tan 8). As she matures, Jing-mei becomes a little more level-headed; she then understands her mother only wants the best for her. Through diction and language, the author creates a character that is

Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who a we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there was no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there was no one else. They have been the ones who love of 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, causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be. “Only two kind of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers

Unlike Chinese culture, Jing-Mei starts to revolt against her mother. As a result of her mother

Sex-role expectations were a very important issue in the relationship between An-Mei and her daughter. Throughout the mother's life, she was expected to