“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 …show more content…
Jing Mei, while portrayed as an obedient child, is only willing to listen to her mother to a certain extent. Throughout the story, it is consistently hinted that Jing Mei would eventually explode against her mother as an attempt to free herself from her mother’s chains. In addition, after the fiasco at the piano recital, she eventually derives further from her mother’s wishes as she “didn 't get straight A...didn 't become class president...didn 't get into Stanford...dropped out of college.” (54). On the flip side, Jing Mei’s mother is a stereotypical Chinese parent who is fully determined to ensure her daughter’s success in a new environment. However, this determination sometimes appears to be obsessive to the point of running her daughter’s life for her. Regardless, she is only trying to help, as she encourages Jing Mei by asserting “‘You can be best anything.’” (1). Because of this, it suggests that although she is very harsh on her daughter at times, it is only to make sure that Jing Mei can use her full potential and not end up losing everything like her …show more content…
As a whole, while the story was very depressing at times, it still has an underlying tone of family ideals, as the relationship between the mother and daughter still remained despite the arguments they had. In my opinion, I think the author’s message that she wished to convey was that despite any event that may occur, family members will always be there support you. This is shown in how, despite Jing Mei’s failures at becoming a prodigy, her mother still supported her and did not give up hope on helping her daughter becoming a successful person. As such, it strengthens the idea that “family will always be there for you”, no matter what hardships come their way. In addition, it helped to add a sense of togetherness in the short story, as it inadvertently revealed how much Jing’s mother actually loved her, despite her tough exterior. Also, the author was most likely trying to convey the idea that everyone has a separate dream of what they want to be when they are an adult. A parent cannot force their child to pursue a career that they do not want to be in because excessively forcing a child to follow a certain life will only make them not enjoy their future; in addition, it could also lead to them caring less about their career, eventually possibly costing them their job. To conclude, I liked the writing style of this short story because while it was depressing at times, it was never fully boring and it had a certain theme of the relationships within families that gave the
Throughout her childhood life her mother, Suyuan, was continuously pushing her to be her best. Jing-Mei purposely tried to fail at everything to prover to her mother that she could never become a great and famous person. Then after a piano recital that went horridly wrong, her and her mother had an argument and their relationship was never the same. Many years later Suyuan tried to give Jing-mei the piano that she had as a child. She refused the offer, but than a year later her mother died and Jing-Mei was cleaning out her mother’s house and decided to play the piano and she was surprised that she still knew how.
(Vanity Fair) Jing-mei’s mother is always bossing her around to make sure that she will have a good future. It is not just the children who have weights on their backs, it is also the parents. “It’s about giving your kids a better life-- as if parenting didn’t come with enough pressures already.” (Vanity Fair) Jing-mei’s mother has a lot of pressure on her because she does not want to be embarrassed by other parents who are better at parenting than she is. She is always trying to make sure her daughter is better than the other kids.
Everyone's culture is different, that's why the majority of people have different opinions on certain subjects. Even though everyone goes through different experiences, the way they were taught growing up effects how they will be in the future. One's culture has a very big impact on how they view others and the world. In the essay, "Ethic Hash" by Patricia J. Williams, She is explaining how people's culture affects the way they see others.
In both the stories, in which both families include a mother who is the first generation immigrant and the daughter who is an American citizen, their relation is very complex because of their distinct thinking. Jing-Mei’s mother has always had a very high expectation for Jing-Mei. Her mother
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
“The Power of One” by Bryce Courtenay is a novel which illustrates the harsh truths of the systematic racism faced during South Africa’s apartheid. Throughout the novel Courtenay displays the main character Peekay’s growth and transition from a child to a man who grows up surrounded by the oppression of the South African people. Courtenay uses Peekay’s unprejudiced and independent spirit to show how one person can help to heal the tensions between the oppressed and the oppressor. From a young age Peekay is forced to become independent because of the isolation he faces during his first time at boarding school. Despite facing bullying and abuse; this allows Peekay to spend pivotal years of his childhood forming his own opinions based on his worldview and not the view of others.
In The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, we are introduced to Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei “June” Woo. As with any relationship, there is conflict between Suyuan Woo and her daughter, as it seems that Jing-Mei doesn’t understand her mother’s Chinese culture and ambitions. In the Chinese culture, women are seen as inferior and often lack basic rights such as the right to marriage or financial holdings, thus deprived of their potential. This is why the rights in the U.S. are seen as privileges to Chinese women, among other minorities, and why Suyuan endeavored for her daughter to become a prodigy and excel in anything and everything. Yet as Jing-Mei was forced into this ideal, and the more her mother tried to enforce this idea, the further she begun to despise her mother for attempting to turn her into a “fraud”.
The use of children in the Sierra Leone Civil War was widespread, with up to 10,000 children taking part in the conflict and up to eighty percent of RUF forces between the ages of seven and fourteen. Ishmael is one of these children. In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Lieutenant Jabati and his men exploit several techniques to transform these frightened children into ruthless killing machines. They do this through the use of drugs, pop culture, as well as character and emotional manipulation. Tactics like these create habits and addictions that are almost impossible to break.
The language barrier causes Jing-Mei to not understand her mother's true meanings and intentions, while her mother understands everything she says but cannot communicate with her in a way that she would understand. Translations are never accurate, and so the mother and the daughter know how to word their intentions properly so it can be interpreted. Another example of the emotional distress going on between the daughters and the mothers is when Suyuan’s daughter Jing-Mei goes to see her half sisters in China. This represents the biggest battle of culturally different countries. June (Jing-Mei) sees this constant battle that her mother has gone through, and is upset that Suyuan died before ever seeing her twins.
She had never questioned what her name meant and now it has come together that her mother 's dreams were for all three of her daughters to be together. Jing now realizes that she has upset her mother by not accepting herself as being Chinese in the beginning. Now Jing realizes her Chinese roots. At the end, the three sisters take a picture together and Jing says, Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished moment” (277).
This disagreement quickly became a source of resentment and anger for both of them, but Jing-Mei and her mother were unable to resolve this conflict because of their different backgrounds and experiences. The story showcases how relationships between mothers and daughters can be strained because of differences in culture and a lack of communication. One of the difficulties between Jing-Mei and her mother is their different cultural backgrounds, which is supported by two points from the story. Firstly, Jing-Mei and her mother both disagreed on the opportunities that existed in America. According to Singer, Amy Tan uses “two entirely
Character Analysis When thinking of families most of the time its people you grew up with, and the culture you grew around. The story " A Pair of Tickets" () draws on what family and culture do to family 's and more importantly one person. June grows up in America where the culture to her is more familiar than that of her Chinese parents. While growing up she thought countless of times that the ways of her mother where strange and embarrassing, and at time she didn’t think of herself as truly to her heritage. Throughout the story June goes through different stages of grief, and finding herself when she truly thought she wasn’t a part of a culture.
This applies to Jing-mei's life because as a child she was the "pleading child," pleading with her mother to give up on her dream of Jing-mei becoming a prodigy. When Jing-mei accepts the piano, she comes to peace with her mother and becomes "perfectly
This peculiarly specific list showed that as a first-generation American, she was constantly scrutinizing the small actions that her mother demonstrated, and she was embarrassed, although it is not likely anyone else ever noticed. However, as she got older, Jing-Mei realized the fact that she was “becoming Chinese.” She still did not truly understand her mother or the beauty of Chinese culture, but her acceptance was the first step of the long excursion of
Similarly to More and Congreve, Melick finds comfort in his ignorance and is quite hostile to differing takes. De Mille describes Melick as “a litterateur”, whom alike to Congreve, proceeds to decipher the manuscript through the expertise he is familiar with (99). Yet, naysayers will state that Melick exemplifies an accurate interpretation of the novel as “a satirical romance” that mocks society; nevertheless, that is not the problem with Melick (De Mille 245). The issue that confounds Melick is his neediness to belittle and ridicule the remarks of his companions. After Congreve’s long and tedious explanation of “polar day”, Melick ridicules Congreve by giving him a glass of wine and remarking “after all those statistics… you must feel rather