Amy Tan writes as many hidden things as the number of her story in Two kinds. As its complex structure suggests, the book tries to organize the the stories of mother and daughter with the intention of reaching the same destination: the daughter’s recovery of her cultural and ethnic identity as Chinese by overcoming the generational gap and the cultural differences between herself and her mother. The mother intend to hand over their “good intentions” and “usable past” in China to their daughter in America. Amy Tan, depicts the relationship between Jing-mei, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant, her mother.
She does not have something special things. However, her normal life has changed a little because of her mother. Her mother who believes America as a land of opportunity expects her daughter to be the best in everything as a prodigy. She is always pushing her daughter to discover some hidden talent. In this process she suffers both internal and external conflicts about those problems. As the story goes on, the daughter grows spiritually, acknowledging their identity as Chinese and accepting also their mother “good intention”.
Amy tan achieves this goal by juxtaposing heterogeneous factors and gradually guiding their direction into a final destination, using “a montage effect”. Those diverse factors contribute to recovering the cultural and ethnic identity of the daughters and futher to making one part of culture in multicultural America. The introduction of the story, Jing-mei’s mother told her “you could be anything you wanted to be in America. ” This means that If I decide what I want, and then everything is possible. It can be seen from the title of the novel “Two kinds” refers to a troubled girl with an identity.
When the mother comes to America in 1949, she was in the middle of thirty. She is born Chinese, so that she can not help being dominated by these Chinese traditional philosophies. The mothers’ strongest wish is that her daughter has the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. Although the mothers moved to America escaping from China, they refuse to change their ethnic identity because they know that they cannot become only American neither can her daughter. One thing that Jing-mei’s mother wants her daughter to was that she try to be a pianist like the little Chinese girl on the Ed Sullivan Show.
So she scheduled piano classes for her daughter without her consent. When she heard this news, she was very upset and felt as though she had been sent to hell because she already underwent many failures, and due to the continued failure she was realized that she is not a genius what her mother wants. she shows antipathy against her mother’s decision. In this part, it is showing the internal conflict of her frustrated heart. When she was young, she also tried to do something that her mother wants, but she always makes her mother frustrated, and it took away her confidence and volition.
So it made her doubting about what she had to do everything. Also the doubt worked on an external conflict as an exacerbating factor. However, Jing-mei began to learn playing the piano with Mr. Chong and participated in the contest of piano. As usual, the result was the worst. After the contest, she said “I’m not going to play anymore, Why should I? I’m not a genius. ” She thought her mother wanted her to be a genius and she didn’t want to be someone that she was not. But her mother demands forci just like always. They yelled at each other. This scene shows the most obvious external conflict about the collision of ideas between them.
After mother listened to her daughter’s feeling, she never told her to play the piano. She respected her daughter’s opinions. Even if their expectation was different, by telling their own ideas, they were able to find a clue to resolve the conflict. Finally Jing-mei could confirm her mother’s real love with one day’s conflicts. “To understand your parents’ love you must raise children yourself. ” Amy Tan illustrates the process of recognizing parent’s love in her short story. This short story tells important learning process due to conflicts between the characters, a daughter and a mother.
Between them, there was getting into problem when Jing-mei is growing older, and getting the ability to think and be conscious deeply about her. The conflict was intensified but we could see the conflict as a clue to this case. So if we get a conflict in everyday life, we will try to make the correct results. What makes the Chinese mothers unable to understand their daughters and hard to adjust to America is their painful memories. They were treated as objects and mobile house property rather than as subjects and human being in China. To be born a woman in China means that her life is expected to be not smooth and not blessed.
