Grasping the same idea, she held onto her hard time back in her home. Jing-mei is her last hope to prove that her homeland can be just as talented as Americans. To follow through with this objective, her mother bends over backwards in search of the "right" kind of prodigy for her daughter. Although Jing-mei determinedly upsets her mother 's desires to make her a prodigy, it was as if it were decades afterwards in life that she picks up the understanding into her mother 's basic motives. This exposition will endeavor that "Two Kinds" is a compelling story to bring to light on the issues of identity.
“Two Kinds,” by Amy Tan, essentially revolves around the struggle of Jing Mei and her constant conflict with her mother. Throughout her life, she is forced into living a life that is not hers, but rather her mom’s vision of a perfect child; because her mother lost everything, which included her parents and kids, so her only hope was through Jing Mei. Jing Mei’s mom watches TV shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show, which gives her inspiration that her daughter should be like the people and actors. First her mom saw how on the television a three-year-old boy can name all the capitals of the states and foreign countries and would even pronounce it correctly. Her mom would quiz Jing Mei on capitals of certain places, only to discover that she would
She is very excited about this, but then is told by her parents she cannot audition because she would not pass the background check. In the Chinese Cultural Revolution Mao wanted to get rid of the “four olds” of China. Suddenly everything is very different in Ji-Li and her family’s life. As the book goes on, they are shutting down stores, they arrest her own father, and Jiang’s family worries about other people being arrested as well. Ji-Li Jiang’s main argument while writing this book is that is it always important to stick together.
Ying Ying never learned to speak her mind or to control the path of her own life. As she watches Lena make the same mistake of passivity, she internally struggles to tell Lena what she sees. “I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.” (Tan 67) Ying Ying lived through a terrible marriage that left her voiceless. She lamented the loss of her unfaithful husband and despite her knowledge of her blamelessness. Her experiences taught her a valuable lesson to respect oneself and to fight for one's beliefs, a lesson she must pass on to her daughter.
Jing-mei alludes to the future life and memories the sisters and she will form as a result of this overdue family reunion. In addition to completing her own journey, Jing-mei also completes her mother’s journey. By sharing all the stories and memories from her mother’s life in China, her mother was in a sense, right aside her in
This information lets the reader realize that Jing-mei is all her mother has left. Just like any other parent, her mother wants the best for Jing-mei, especially because Jing-mei is all her mother has left. When the main character was young, she was perfectly fine with her mother trying to make her into a prodigy. Jing-mei would look forward to becoming famous like her mom wanted. The author mentions this by writing, “I liked the haircut, and it made me actually
They tried to help her find her mother but she was nowhere to be found. The fishermen then drop Ying-Ying off at the shore, so that when her parents arrive they find her. Ying-Ying sees a play beginning to start, and it’s about the Moon Lady. She remembers that if she makes a wish with good intentions and no selfish desires
As for Jing-Mei and her mother, their sacrifice came from the cultural clashes in which conflicting beliefs held by the mother and the daughter resulted in a broken family relationship. She wished for her daughter success and fame, and she made every endeavour to realize her prodigy child dream, doing unpaid housekeeping work in order to afford piano lessons for Jing-Mei, not to mention leaving behind everything she had in China: her whole family, including her twin baby daughters when she departed to America. Ironically, the liberal, self-asserting values that America has
Throughout the story, Jing-mei’s feeling toward her mother change in critical ways. As a young child, Jing-mei wants constant attention from her mother, going so far as agreeing to become a child prodigy. In the story, Jing-mei commented, “In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so” (Tan 221). This was before her mother becomes highly adamant about wanting her child to become a prodigy. As time went on, she wanted Jing-mei to become the epitome of a child star.
After the fight, many years of silence and resentment followed, stemming from both Jing-mei and her mother, until one day her mother offered Jing-mei the piano, resembling forgiveness and acknowledging that they have put their history in the past. The narrator explains, “Last week I sent a tuner over to my parents’ apartment and had the piano