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Cultural Differences In The Short Story 'Two Kinds'

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"Two Kinds" is a short story in which focuses on the conflict between a mother and her daughter on what is best for her in life. The conflict between the two shows the cultural differences between the two family members, this is important to catch because it's these differences that bring up the real message within the story. "Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything. The mother has one goal and that's to make her daughter into a prodigy, efforts made only seemed to show disappointing results which turns the scenario around for her, which now thinks she was never meant to be anything great. This is the first sign of conflict beginning the story, the situation created an opposing force to her mother's efforts. This conflict shows the reader that although what her mother is doing is for the greater good, her daughter will not be able to meet her mother's expectations because of how she sees things. …show more content…

The mother descending from Chinese culture was raised believing in being obedient, modest, and dedicated, while on the other hand, the daughter has more of an American culture to her, she wants to be herself. These differences are responsible for most of the conflict in the story, it's what stirs around the messages and interprets them differently to each character. " Why don't you like me the way I am?" I cried. "I'm not a genius! I can't play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldn't go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!" In this example, you can see how the author simply wants her mother to be happy for who she is. The author's mother takes in what her daughter has to say and she begins to think her daughter is ungrateful for taking advantage of all the opportunities that she is opening for

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(Tan 3) While both authors effectively develop their characters through vivid depictions, Trevor Noah does so with his conversational style, opposed to Amy Tan, who utilizes a more symbolic approach. The piano, for example, illustrates the hope that the narrator’s mother has for her daughter. While there are still symbols that appear throughout Born a Crime, the author’s purpose is not for the reader to find a deeper meaning of his story, but for them to engage and connect with his words. Because Two Kinds is a fictional story, the literary style differs from that of a memoir. For instance, the emotional depth found in Two Kinds is not as evident in Born a Crime.

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“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan and “The Stolen Party” by Liliana Heker are both short stories that deal with the complicated relationship between mother and daughter. Both short stories have written about how the daughters are trying to prove their mothers wrong on how they are to live their lives because if they let their mother tell them what to do, they would feel like they do not have power over themselves and what they want to do. Although both stories have this in common both girls deal with the given situation differently by either taking the positive approach by proving their mother wrong, or by taking the negative approach. In the story “Two Kinds,” Jing Mei takes the negative approach by trying really hard to make her mother disappointed in her. And hey, she succeeded.

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