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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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