Amy Tan Two Kinds Theme

Amy Tran’s story of the “Two Kinds” is a story about mother and her daughter who has complicated relationship and the relationship will deteriorate as the mother pushes her daughter to become a best for everything. At the beginning of the story ,Amy give us the impression that mother wants her daughter to become more productive and flourish in the society and to some degree to exceed everything for the best because she did not had the chance that her daughter have today. The mother was born and raised in china where she had lost her mother, her father, her first husband, her twin’s babies. It can be said the loss and tragedy has been vanished from her and she is only focused from now on her present life and the future headed of her daughter.

One thing that the author was trying to get across is that people have to fight for what they want. Nothing is simply handed to anyone. In “Many Rivers to Cross”, she goes through a lot of adversity. The divorce with her husband was one, but the main one was her mother’s suicide. Usually after someone dies in a person’s life, a whole new window is opened. The young woman realized a lot after her mother’s death. The effect of her mother’s death was that she knew from then on that she had to live her life the best way she can. She was so tired of letting everyone down. This was her revelation, “And it was to honor my mother that I did fight with my father, that man who could not tell the living from the dead,” she said, “And really it is to honor Mrs. Hazel Griffin and my cousin Valerie all the woman that I love” (Jordan, 68-71). The struggles that the character in “Two Kinds” goes through is continuously disappointing her mother. What was most difficult for her was that she lives in a foreign family, a Chinese family, which most people know that they can be really strict people. Every time her mother set her up to do something that she did not want to do, she failed at it and that made her mother upset. The author is showing the reader the effects of that through the emotion of the child. But she did come to a revelation with herself. She knew that her mother could only do so much

Amy Tan had many personal experiences in her story. For example, when Amy Tan was living in Northern California, her mother had very high expectations on her. Her mother wanted her to be with the American society and be the best she could be. Amy Tan had to get a haircut very short to the way other famous children were acting in the United States. Amy’s mother was the one who encouraged this. With that, in the story “Two Kinds,” the young girl named Jing-mei live in a part of California and she had to get a very short haircut. Jing-mei’s mother wanted her daughter to look and act the same way Shirley Temple did. Within both of the girls lives, they each had to act like an already famous person exactly to please their mothers.

The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to

If Ni’kan used her temper for talent, she would’ve become famous. Ni’kan is fighting her mom while mom just wants her daughter to put forth her best effort. Ni’kan can’t see this because she no longer wants to try to do anything for her mom. Not realizing that her mom is only trying to bring out who she already is. Ni’Kan’s rebellion to her mom caused her to not live out her full potential as a child and throughout her adult life.

The title of this short story is called “Two Kind”. The title is referring to the two types of daughter Jing-mei’s mother talked about after Jing-mei refused to take piano lessons after she had failed at the performance show, “‘Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow

In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American,

The daughter is bored with her mother's dreams and lets her pride take over. She often questions her self-worth, and she decides that she respects herself as nothing more than the normal girl that she is and always will be. Her mother is trying to mold her into something that she can never be, she believes, and only by her futile attempts to rebel can she hold on to the respect that she has for herself. The daughter is motivated only to fail so that she may continue on her quest to be normal. Her only motivation for success derives from her own vanity; although she cannot admit it to herself or her mother, she wants the audience to see her as that something that she is not, that same something that her mother hopes she could be.

"Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about the intricacies and complexities in the relationship between a mother and daughter. Throughout the story, the mother imposes upon her daughter, Jing Mei, her hopes and dreams for her. Jing Mei chooses not what her mother wants of her but only what she wants for herself. She states, "For, unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could be only me" (Tan 1). Thus this "battle of wills" between mother and daughter sets the conflict of the story.

In the story Two Kinds by Amy Tan it tells the tale of conflict between a mother Suyuan and her daughter Jing-mei over piano lessons. Two Kinds deals with a clash between a mother’s belief of hard work and persistance and a daughter's belief that being a prodigy is unachievable. Amy Tan shows generational differences among immigrant families negotiating the mythology of the American Dream.

“In 2009, 33 million people in the United States were second generation immigrants, representing 11% of the national population. The children of such immigrants in the U.S., also known as "second generation immigrants," experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society” (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of “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.

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

Like many immigrants think, America is the land of opportunity. People from all over the world,

Both men and women are faced with the cultural strains of gender norms. Although one can sympathize for 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 “Pleading Child” and she only realizes that the song has a second half called “Perfectly Contented” until adulthood. The two contrasting pieces of music represent the defiance of women to standards of femininity set by the patriarchy. This is showcased by the relationship between Ni kan and her mother who symbolize women living in a patriarchal society and the patriarchy itself, respectively. Moreover, their relationship reflects the oppression of women by the ideologies of; undermining a woman’s value, denying a woman’s choice and the disagreement between the sexes.

I believe that in the story Two Kinds Ni kan is going to have a miserable life at the end, and she is going to suffer because of her beliefs when she was young. In class we discussed the story Two Kinds, and most of the people in the class though Ni kna is going to have a better future because she is starting to understand what her mom wanted from her and they think that she is going to have a better future. But I disagree because Ni kan is about 35 years old now, and I believe it’s too late for her to get to the right way, and even if she understood what her mother meant now she would not be able to go back to high school and get to college. So because of her mistakes when she was young,she is going to pay the price for what she did. I think