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Amy Tan Two Kinds Conflict

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It's difficult to live up to your parents' expectations when they conflict with your aims and ambitions. The short story “Two Kinds”, by Amy Tan, displays this conflict in a first-person narrative point of view by concentrating on the outcome these struggles can have on family relationships. Jing-Mei Woo, the protagonist, and her mother, Suyuan Woo experience many conflicts and disagreements provoked by their different views on success. The physical and verbal altercations between the two main characters had caused a permanent strain in their relationship. Jing-Mei is attempting to find herself in the midst of her mother’s eagerness for her to be extraordinary, and in the process of Jing-Mei finding herself, she begins to rebel against the pressures her mother has placed on her. Just being the pleasing daughter and fulfilling her mother’s expectations was not …show more content…

Jing-Mei talks about the moment when she’s looking in the mirror and hates the face that is staring back at her. This is a moment that is filled with self-recrimination. She begins to cry and make high-pitched animal noises out of pure frustration for failing herself. Jing-Mei takes a second look at herself, and she could finally recognize the girl staring back at her, she says, “The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’ts. I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not” (Tan 358). Instead of attempting to change who she is, she decided to change her attitude towards what was going on around her. Jing-Mei distanced herself from her mother's attempts at being a prodigy by becoming disinterested in their tests and learning the piano. She rebelled against her mother’s outsized expectations and exaggerated ideas of what is possible in the United

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453 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout her childhood life her mother, Suyuan, was continuously pushing her to be her best. Jing-Mei purposely tried to fail at everything to prover to her mother that she could never become a great and famous person. Then after a piano recital that went horridly wrong, her and her mother had an argument and their relationship was never the same. Many years later Suyuan tried to give Jing-mei the piano that she had as a child. She refused the offer, but than a year later her mother died and Jing-Mei was cleaning out her mother’s house and decided to play the piano and she was surprised that she still knew how.

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1013 Words | 5 Pages

As Jing-mei’s mother is telling her that she has to go play piano, the reader can imagine how she gets more and more angry as her daughter disregards what she is saying. Finally, the narrator emphasizes to the reader how the relationship between Jing-mei and her mother deteriorates more and more as time

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1066 Words | 5 Pages

This disagreement quickly became a source of resentment and anger for both of them, but Jing-Mei and her mother were unable to resolve this conflict because of their different backgrounds and experiences. The story showcases how relationships between mothers and daughters can be strained because of differences in culture and a lack of communication. One of the difficulties between Jing-Mei and her mother is their different cultural backgrounds, which is supported by two points from the story. Firstly, Jing-Mei and her mother both disagreed on the opportunities that existed in America. According to Singer, Amy Tan uses “two entirely

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429 Words | 2 Pages

“After losing everything in China…She never looked back with regret. ”(Chunk 1 ¶3). Jing-Mei’s mother is a Chinese immigrant with the typical ‘everything is better in America’ mindset. Jing-Mei, being raised in America, had more of an American mindset. “You want me to be someone i’m not…I’ll never be the daughter you want me to be!”

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407 Words | 2 Pages

Alyssa Tan Ms. Brown ENG2D1 21 March 2023 The Universal Truth About Parent and Child Relationships in “First Day” by Edward P. Jones In Edward P. Jones's short story "First Day," a young girl's view of her mother changes from infallibility to imperfection. As her perspective shapes into her own, the ingenuous thoughts of her mother fade, and the mother reveals her shortcomings, the story conveys that as children grow and mature, they will inevitably begin to see their parents' imperfections. At the beginning of the story, the mother goes to strenuous efforts to get her child to her first day of school.

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808 Words | 4 Pages

Being a parent is something anyone can do. Only the competent ones, however, can raise a child that surpasses oneself--a child that will revitalize one’s purpose. Sharing a faulty/disconnected dynamic, the mother and child in the stories “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan and “Rice and Rose Bowl Blues” by Mei Lin Mark have trouble communicating what one wants to the other and why a working consensus cannot be reached. Both sets of characters in their respective stories have a similar problem and struggle throughout the story that is never properly resolved. Using similes, figurative language, syntax, and connotative diction, Tan and Mark reveal the theme that when children are given unreasonably high expectations when they are young, they are put into

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862 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the story, Jing-mei’s feeling toward her mother change in critical ways. As a young child, Jing-mei wants constant attention from her mother, going so far as agreeing to become a child prodigy. In the story, Jing-mei commented, “In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so” (Tan 221). This was before her mother becomes highly adamant about wanting her child to become a prodigy. As time went on, she wanted Jing-mei to become the epitome of a child star.

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At first Jing-Mei grew in her dreams and desirers to be perfect for her family; “In all of my imaginings

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947 Words | 4 Pages

In Jing Mei's opinion, she has let her mother down. Jingmei’s whole childhood has been all about trying to be what her mother wants her to be. Now that she's older and has given up on becoming a prodigy and making her mother proud, she realizes how disappointed her mother was with

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2019 Words | 9 Pages

She then uses these “new thoughts” and ideas to state that she “won’t let her [mother] change” her into the person she seeks her daughter to be. When Jing-Mei experiences a realization that she is her own person and not simply another part of her mother, she can embrace the comfort of knowing that she will not change for anyone, and is simply extraordinary for having her own thoughts and feelings. This reflects how Amy Tan can understand her thoughts and feelings about the hardships in her relationship with her mother as a way to connect more closely to her characters and make them more realistic in her writing (“How Amy Tan’s family stories made her a

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1026 Words | 5 Pages

She deliberately fails her mother’s expectations by defying the belief that her mother fostered, as “unlike [her] mother, [she] did not

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1479 Words | 6 Pages

In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" the mother and the daughter show how through generations a relationship of understanding can be lost when traditions, dreams, and pride do not take into account individuality. By applying the concepts of Julia Kristeva and other feminist thought, one can analyze the discourse Tan uses in the story and its connection to basic feminist principles. Jing-mei and her mother understand a symbolic language, however their semiotic language is very different. In fact up on realizing Jing-mei's "failure" to be a prodigy it causes her to reject that symbolic language and a double barrier is created to a healthy relationship with one another. By analytically approaching literature with psychoanalytical concepts, French feminists

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937 Words | 4 Pages

Jing Mei, while portrayed as an obedient child, is only willing to listen to her mother to a certain extent. Throughout the story, it is consistently hinted that Jing Mei would eventually explode against her mother as an attempt to free herself from her mother’s chains. In addition, after the fiasco at the piano recital, she eventually derives further from her mother’s wishes as she “didn 't get straight A...didn 't become class president...didn 't get into Stanford...dropped out of college.” (54). On the flip side, Jing Mei’s mother is a stereotypical Chinese parent who is fully determined to ensure her daughter’s success in a new environment.

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1309 Words | 6 Pages

At her first glance at them, she knew exactly who they were because of their resemblance to their mother. However, as she approached them, she realized that there were no evident similarities in features between them and her mother, but that the similarities she noticed at first ran deep in their blood: they were family. And at this brief moment of realization, the most perceptible change in Jing-Mei took place. She said, “Now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious.

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477 Words | 2 Pages

“For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me.” (Tan 24). With this statement you can see that she does not agree with her mother. Jing-Mei’s Mother was raised in Chinese culture, therefore she is very strict and demanding to Jing-Mei to do what she wants. From doing a chore, to hobbies or even Jing-Mei’s passion.

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