Amy Tan Tow Kinds Analysis

“You could be anything you want to be in America”… this is the main ideology that many immigrant parents hope for their children’s futures. This hope would turn into a major conflict that characterize the short story Tow Kinds, written by Ammy Tan. In the story, the main character 's mother, Suyuan, tries hard to find the wright way that would lid to her daughter success. She strongly believes that her daughter, Jing, would be someone very famous and important only because she lives in America. Jing is a child raised in America by her mother who had lost everything in China, and being in America turns to be her only hope in life. For Sue this country is the place were nothing is impossible and every dream can come true. She tries to find the …show more content…
It also explores the relationship between immigrant parents and their children who often believe that they must reject their parents and be themselves. The primary theme of the author in these short story and overall in the whole book is the mother-daughter dynamic power and the fight between traditional and modern values. These themes are seeing commonly in Amy Tan 's books. Many of her stories feature a mother who grew up in China and a daughter who is born in America and rejects many of the traditional rules and believes. There is a giant cultural gap between many first generation and this culture gap is very obvious between Jing-mei 's and her mother’s relationship. Jing-mei 's grew up in America and eventually she has an essential different experience from her mother’s …show more content…
In Two Kinds the mother does not show a great need to learn more about how her child is growing up in a different environment, and how to eliminate their cultural misunderstanding and conflicts between her and her daughter. Their conflict is very common and come from different reasons and experiences that parent and children have had. The result is that both parent and children end up heaving disagreement and misunderstanding that often led to weak relationship between them. The parent- child conflict start early in young children but it is more obvious and major in adolescence. During adolescence, individuals go through a lot of changes and their parent’s pressure can exaggerate their conflicts even more. “In the case of immigrants, the adolescent 's normal striving for independence combines with the powerful acculturation to the American cultural value of individualism…. The combination may produce an exacerbated and intensified interfamilial conflict in which parents and adolescents feel alienated from each other” (Buki 169). This major issue confronted by immigrant children and their families is the acculturation gap that emerges between generations over time. The acculturation is the cause of conflicts in Amy Tan’s story and mostly in all other immigrant families in United States. This major