Reading between the lines it can be understood that one must not be influenced by the pressures of the environment and of the other people. All in all it can be stated that a major theme in the works of May Tan is represented by the American colonialism taking place in the contemporary world at cultural level. Just as it has been stated in the beginning of the paper, language

When it came time to recite what she knew, Jing-Mei was so sure of herself that she could pull it off that she began making sure all they keys on the piano were punched incorrectly and realizing it. Jinq-Mei method was successful but it was here that she brought shame to her mother. The show was a disaster and Jing-Mei hated the piano so much to the point that

Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri Both Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" and Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent" tell stories about the cultural clash between eastern cultures and the western world of the United States. This is not the only point of similarity between these two women or their writing styles. Besides the fact that they were second-generation immigrants, both women had mothers who wished them to hold onto their heritage

Tan's experience with the piano underscores the stark contrast between the way her mother believed fame and fortune work in America, and the way she believed they worked. She writes, "Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me. And for all those years we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible declarations afterward at

I never really listened to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else" (2). Naturally, her poor practice leads to a poor performance in front of her family and peers. Here however, her reactions betray her. Tan reveals that Jing-mei values her mother's acceptance of her above anything. When Jing-mei laments that her "mother's expression was what devastated [her]: a quiet, blank look that

For Amy Tan, however, attempting, for her parents' sake, to become simultaneously Chinese and American, without compromising either culture, or herself, was a tricky balancing act. As E.D. Huntley adds: Amy Tan spent her childhood years attempting to understand, as well as to come to terms with and to reconcile, the contradictions between her ethnicity and the dominant Western culture in which she was being raised and educated. She lived the