There exists a stereotype about the children of immigrants: their parents press them hard to be successful, to be more than the ordinary, to avoid the struggles they themselves once faced. Those parents, perhaps, see the success of the future generation as the fruits of their own labor. People often hold the idea that immigrant parents are living vicariously through their children. In many ways, as they sometimes are, this stereotype is not far from the truth. Such behaviors are observable in the stories and memoirs of immigrants’ children; for instance, Jing-mei of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”. Jing-mei’s mother was so intensely set upon her daughter being a “prodigy” that Jing-mei was driven to destroy the relationship between them just to preserve
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Therefore, it is no surprise that this single-minded quest for the acquisition of motherly approval came to a head. The daughter was still desperate and scrambling for the love of a mother who wanted only the best for her, but her cries were now different. Where the girl had once dreamed to “scratch out the face in the mirror (Tan 477)” of the daughter who could not satisfy her mother, she now wished nothing more than to be someone who felt not the need. Though the two had always been motivated differently, there was now a great chasm between their respective views of happiness and success. This change would rend the relationship between them, starting with Jing-mei’s refusal to pass her mother’s tests. Tan writes of the relationship between mother and daughter as one full of unhappiness and disappointment for both of them. Jing-mei, for instance, was in a state of discontent with her mother’s demands, refusing to work hard and hone her skills as a pianist almost out of spite. As a result, her mother was ultimately let down by Jing-mei’s lack of effort and poor performance; her daughter’s failure may well have stung more for the mother than for Jing-mei herself. However, Jing-mei’s mother truly loved her, though that was not always clear to Jing-mei. In spite of the daughter’s abject and purposeful lack of success, her mother offered up forgiveness in the form of the what had once been a stinging reminder of failure: the
Therefore, it is no surprise that this single-minded quest for the acquisition of motherly approval came to a head. The daughter was still desperate and scrambling for the love of a mother who wanted only the best for her, but her cries were now different. Where the girl had once dreamed to “scratch out the face in the mirror (Tan 477)” of the daughter who could not satisfy her mother, she now wished nothing more than to be someone who felt not the need. Though the two had always been motivated differently, there was now a great chasm between their respective views of happiness and success. This change would rend the relationship between them, starting with Jing-mei’s refusal to pass her mother’s tests. Tan writes of the relationship between mother and daughter as one full of unhappiness and disappointment for both of them. Jing-mei, for instance, was in a state of discontent with her mother’s demands, refusing to work hard and hone her skills as a pianist almost out of spite. As a result, her mother was ultimately let down by Jing-mei’s lack of effort and poor performance; her daughter’s failure may well have stung more for the mother than for Jing-mei herself. However, Jing-mei’s mother truly loved her, though that was not always clear to Jing-mei. In spite of the daughter’s abject and purposeful lack of success, her mother offered up forgiveness in the form of the what had once been a stinging reminder of failure: the