Jing-Mei Where She Stands Analysis

Jing-Mei: Where She Stands
Amy Tan tells us her story through Jing-Mei, a first generation Chinese American, who is trying to find her social standing, in Two Kinds. I think that through the clash of cultures within her household Jing-Mei comes to find she here place in life. She grows up to be “Americanized” since American cultural values are different to Chinese values she chooses to be more of an American child than a Chinese one.
In Identities and Social Locations: Who Am I? Who Are My People? By Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, they tell us our social standing in based on three levels, Micro- who we think we are on a personal level, Meso, -who everyone around us think we are as a person and Macro- what society thinks we are as people.

It is no secret that all parents want talented children, and some even go as far as to say that there is an unspoken competition between parents, especially in Asian families, of who can produce the best child. In America this is not really a concept. Parents are more free with their children and encourage them to do what they want to do, in a liberal way. Asian Parents tend to be more dictating in what their children do. Since Jing-Mei had grown up in America, she is more accustomed to the freedom that she has, and therefore resents that her mother is trying to run her life. “I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I am not” (Tan, 1989) with this declaration she decided to change her mother’s view of her, and that of anyone else her mother. I think that this is the critical moment that she decided that she will be more of an American child then a Chinese one. Jing-Mei would passively defy her mother by answering her mother’s questions without enthusiasm. This slowly changed her mother’s perception of her, to a short tempered, lazy kid. On her mother’s part she worked even harder to make Jing-Mei realize her potential. Even making her do piano lessons to realize her