Amy Tan

Both Amy Tan in “Two Kinds” and Alice Walker in “Everyday Use” provide the theme of self realization through experience. Although both focus on mother daughter relationships, Tan tells her point of view from the daughter, Jing Mei. While Walker narrates through Mama’s point of view. In “Two Kinds” Amy Tan tells a story of a mother and daughter’s relationship with one another straining as the stress of conflicting dreams comes to a head. To the mother, Suyuan, America is the land of…

Amy Tan’s discussion of her cultural identity is heightened through the varying levels of intimacy in her tone to ultimately mirror the fluctuating reverence and admiration that she has for her mother. Though unaddressed, it is implied through the absence of “we” that there is a prevalent cultural divide between Tan and her mother. Tan speaks to daughters of immigrant mothers in, Mother Tongue, as she analyzes the limits of being culturally and linguistically authentic in a society where the…

parents often force their children to do things that their children feel are either unnecessary or inappropriate for their age level? One narrator feels the same way when she complains to her mother, ”You want to be someone that I’m not!”(Tan 231). In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, Jing-mei, the protagonist of the story, has a difficult relationship with her mother because her mother wants her to be something that she feels she is not: a prodigy. However, in the end, Jing-mei’s conflict with her mother…

Jing-Mei is a character from the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. The story follows a Chinese mother and daughter (Jing-Mei) living in America. Throughout the story, Jing-Mei and her mother struggle with one another, her mother wanting her to be a child prodigy and her constant fighting against becoming one. Knowing that Jing-Mei does not want to be a prodigy gives us great insight into who she is as a character. Wanting to just be herself, fighting against her mother, and purposefully…

life, among all else, only to come to a new country and experience loss of identity and difficulty assimilating to a whole new, obscure culture. In the novel, The Joy Luck Club, the author, Amy Tan writes about the personal stories of four pairs of Asian immigrant mothers and their second generation daughters. Tan poetically depicts the struggles of both the daughters and mothers with cultural values, language, and identity. While reading through the stories of these mothers and daughters,…

daughters’ lives without thinking their daughters have other plans which differ from them. There are two stories that at some points have something in common between mothers and daughters relationship: “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. Kincaid writes about the advices a mother gives to her daughter mainly emphasizing which are the things she needs…

Everybody goes through major conflicts. It’s a part of life. It could be as small as what clothes you should wear today, or it could be as big as what college you should go to. Conflicts can arise from anything. In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, many of the characters go through internal and external conflicts that greatly affect their life. Eventually, they resolve that conflict. For example, the relationship between Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong has some conflicts that go along with it. They…

Club by Amy Tan showcases the disconnections between mother and daughters, particularly those of immigrants. In the book Mothers and Daughters: Complicated Connections Across Cultures, Alice H. Deakins, Rebecca Bryant Lockridge, and Helen M. Sterk make the argument that all women share one experience in common, being a daughter (90). While that argument is true, it is a little more complicated, each daughter goes through different experiences than others, as shown in The Joy Luck Club (Tan).…

The Significance of the “Two Halves of the Same Song” Many people are familiar with the yin-yang symbol. The symbol represents the idea that everything has both light and dark aspects, and that one cannot exist without the other. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, a girl named Jing-Mei feels pressured by her mother to be a genius. Her mother tries to find something for her daughter to be a prodigy at – whether that is being a “Chinese Shirley Temple,” or memorizing state capitals, or even doing…

unfolds for the next generation. This then gives birth to character, the synthesis of human genetics and growth of unique personality through life experiences. Generations and character are both prominent themes in the novel, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. The four mothers in the novel represent the older, Chinese traditional generation and their four daughters represent the new Chinese-infused American generation. Although some might argue that the daughter’s resistance to her mother’s influence…