Amy Tan is a famous American writer who was born in 1952. She is well-known for her novellas about the conflict between mothers and daughters and the difficulties of the Chinese-American experience. Amy Tan’s first book is The Joy Luck Club (1989). It consists of sixteen novellas, which are united by the same characters and by the generational conflict, but also can stand alone themselves (Nagel 277). One of the short stories of this book is called “Two Kinds”, and this very novella will be analyzed in this essay. The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of “Two Kinds”, and to discuss the causes of differences between mothers and daughters and the moment of the conflict resolution.
First of all, it is important to give a summary of the “Two Kinds”. This novella tells a story about complicated relationships between a mother and her daughter, Jing-mei. Mrs. Woo moved from China to the USA, and now she truly believes that “you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (Tan 132). She aims to find her daughter’s hidden talents, and, after trying many things, decides to send her to piano lessons. Jing-mei, who is determined to prove to her mother that she has no talents, does not put much effort to learn.
A year later, the girl has to perform in a talent show, where she completely fails. After the performance, she refuses to continue piano lessons and has a huge fight with her mother. Mrs. Woo says that there are “only two kinds of daughters: those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter” (Tan 136). The next time Jing-mei plays the piano is many years later when Mrs. Woo dies, and she comes to her mother’s house again.
The great difference in ways of thinking may be attributed to a combination of several reasons. The first reason is the age difference and, accordingly, the lack of life experience the daughter has. Jing-mei knows about her mother’s losses, but she cannot fully understand her since she never went through anything like that. Her mother’s desire to make Jing-mei famous seems meaningless and stupid to the child, so she puts no effort into learning something and much effort to prove Suyuan Woo wrong. As to Mrs. Woo, it is evident that she does not understand her child; she forgot what it means to be a nine-year-old. It seems like the daughter and the mother speak different languages, the language of youth and the one of old age, and do not want to try to understand each other.
The second reason is the cultural differences between Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei. According to Borus, the mother is afraid that her daughter “will not have Chinese character” (42). No matter how hard Mrs. Woo believes in the American Dream, she is still Chinese and wants her daughter to be Chinese too. However, the truth is that Jing-mei was born in the USA, she lives in the USA, and she is far away from the Chinese traditions. While her mother organizes a Chinese club that aims at “the preservation of the generational wisdom of a culture” (Hays 54), her daughter is not very interested in that culture. She finds her only talent, to thwart her mother’s ambitions, and sticks to it for many years.
The third reason for the misunderstanding between the mother and the daughter is personality differences. Undoubtedly, the fact that Mrs. Woo and Jing-mei have different characters is evident. It is believed that “at the core of the struggle is the conflict between Suyuan Woo’s belief in America as the land of the unlimited potential and Jing-mei’s more realistic expectations” (Werlock). Mrs. Woo wants her daughter to become famous and successful; Jing-mei, meanwhile, does not have any ambitions and high hopes for the future.
She is an ordinary girl, “not a genius,” and wants to stay the same (Tan 136). From all of the above, one can say that “Two Kinds” is an examination of Chinese-American mother-daughter relationships. Tan believes that it is hard for Jing-mei to support her mother and follow Chinese traditions as her homeland is America (Tan 138). Moreover, this short story portrays a more universal clash of wills between mothers and daughters. The generational conflict exists in every century and every country. Because of age, cultural and personality differences, many mothers and daughters feel the generation gap between them.
It is hard to disagree that the conflict between mothers and daughters is complicated. The title of the story, “Two Kinds”, “refers to two kinds of daughters – Chinese and American – identifying the two perspectives that create the story’s conflict (Kirszner and Mandell 3).
The resolution of the conflict takes place at the end of the story when Jing-mei is thirty years old. After her mother’s death, Jing-mei takes the piano to her home and starts playing, realizing that she still remembers how to do that. After some moments, it appears to her that the two pieces, the “Pleading Child” and the “Perfectly Contented,” are two parts of the same song (Tan 136). That means that a child may be different – pleading and pleased, obedient and following their mind.
To conclude, one can admit that the conflict between generations is very complicated. Although a mother and a daughter may love and understand each other, there are moments when the generation gap appears in their lives. Parents and children are different as they grow up in different times, societies, and circumstances. As misunderstandings cannot be completely avoided, mothers and daughters need to do their best to listen and to understand each other.
Works Cited
Borus, Audrey. Reading and Interpreting the Works of Amy Tan. Enslow Publishing, 2016.
Hays, Sara. “Playing Games as Cultural Expression: Mah Jong, Chess, and Bourré in the Works of Amy Tan and Tim Gautreaux.” Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research, vol. 7, 2017, pp. 53-66.
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Cengage Learning, 2017.
Nagel, James. The American Short Story Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” The Joy Luck Club. Random House, 2008, pp. 132-144.
Werlock, Abby H. P. Encyclopedia of the American Short Story. Infobase Learning, 2015.