“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known”(Palahniuk, Chuck. Invisible Monsters. W.W.Norton, September 1999). “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan and “My Mother’s Closet” by Kate Buckley both relate to this quote about self identity. The short story “Two kinds” outlines Jing Mei’s life and the high expectations that her mother has for her, while the poem “My Mother’s Closet” depicts a child wondering where their mother has gone. In both works, it shows how a parent can influence their child’s self-identity just by the actions that they do. Parents affect their kids simply by the actions that they commit. In “Two kinds” the actions that Jing Mei’s mother did to help Jing Mei become this prodigy, lead …show more content…
If the parent suddenly goes away, the child will feel a sense of loss and desperation to find out where the person they looked up to went. In “My Mother’s Closet”, because of the Mother’s absence, the child felt a sense of anguish, feeling that they had to find where their mother had gone;like it was their duty. “I searched your handbags, examined then for signs, evidence—“(line 3, stanza 3). This child is at a loss to what happened to their other parent. They are looking at the tiniest, most insignificant details, just to try and find their mother. “Your shoes were their own country, the heels, satins,the inexplicable mud — I scraped them with small fingernails, marveling at the gorgeous debris, wishing I had a microscope”(stanza 2). Mud is such an irrelevant detail, yet to this child it’s a gold mine of it will help find their mother. These quotes prove to point that, because of the Mother’s action to disappear, (whether it being her fault or not) she has affected her child. As a result, this child may never fully self-identify themselves, because they may have never gotten that closure of knowing what happened to their missing parent. Therefore, whether a parent is present or absent in a child’s life, they will help to shape who the child becomes with