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Two Kinds By Amy Tan Thesis Statement

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Thesis Statement: In the short story, Two Kinds, Amy Tan develops a narrator who as a child seeks her mother’s approval of her, but develops into a child with her own mind, and by the end of the story embodies a woman who realizes that her mother has her own expression of love for her daughter. Thus, Amy Tan depicts a message about Jing-Mei, the narrator, accepting that everyone, especially her mother, has their own expressions of love. This will look different depending on who a person is and their background. Even though Jing-Mei does not always feel her mother loves her, she learns that her mother loves her by reflecting on her childhood and struggles. Body Paragraph 1: Topic sentence: As a child, Jing-Mei dreams of becoming a child prodigy …show more content…

She then uses these “new thoughts” and ideas to state that she “won’t let her [mother] change” her into the person she seeks her daughter to be. When Jing-Mei experiences a realization that she is her own person and not simply another part of her mother, she can embrace the comfort of knowing that she will not change for anyone, and is simply extraordinary for having her own thoughts and feelings. This reflects how Amy Tan can understand her thoughts and feelings about the hardships in her relationship with her mother as a way to connect more closely to her characters and make them more realistic in her writing (“How Amy Tan’s family stories made her a …show more content…

1st Sandwich: Jing-Mei revisits her memories of growing up while in her childhood home and reflects on how she continuously defies her mother’s wishes for her and always falls short of her expectations for her. Jing-Mei briefly mentions how she never meets her mother’s expectations after she does not “ become class president [or] get into Stanford.” As Jing-Mei continues to never meet her mother’s expectations for her, her mother never shapes her into the person that she wishes Jing-Mei to be. Due to her mother never changing Jing-Mei into the person she wished her to be, Jing-Mei can grow from a child that always wants her mother to express love for her, into a more grown-up and independent version of herself. This relates to how Amy Tan inspires her characters from real people in her life, which allows her to reflect on how people affect her life in her writing (“How Amy Tan’s family stories made her a

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