Amy Tan\'s Two Kinds Two

Amy Tan's Two Kinds

Two Kinds: Daughter-mother relations

In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds," the inability to communicate that many children and their parents succumb to is a main theme that resonates throughout the entire short story. Jing-Mei is unable to reconcile two contradictory sentiments throughout the story: 1). A feeling of rebellion towards her mother which leads to self-sabotage and failure and 2). A strong feeling of needing her mother's approval and acceptance. Both of these feelings are portrayed vividly and poignantly throughout the story and from the writer's perspective define the mother-daughter relationship. It is evident however, that Jing-mei's rebelliousness is in fact a veiled cry for affection and unconditional from her mother that she does not believe she is receiving and does not know how to ask for.

In the opening paragraph, Jing-mei refers to her mother in a distant third-person, as if to distance herself from her mother's beliefs. The remainder of the opening chapter is a recitation of all the things that mother did to Jing-mei that caused the little girl to build up resentments. Though Tan does not expressly state that Jing-mei felt resentful toward her mother, Tan uses these antedotes to define Jing-mei as the protagonist and her mother as the antagonist. The stories about the student barber, the Good Housekeeping accounts of child prodigies and the incessant testing are all used by Tan to convey to the reader that Jing-mei felt she would never equal her mother's expectations and demands for her and did not receive positive feedbalck or unconditional love from her.

Jing-mei's rebelliousness first surfaces when she decides to willfully fail her mother's after dinner tests. She states that her goal was to perform so badly that her mother would "give up hope" (Tan 1). Jing-mei rebels because she believes that in trying to live up to her mother's expectations, she will lose touch with who she is. This is evident when she confronts herself in the bathroom: "I had new thoughts, willful thoughts - or. rather, thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not" (1). To defy her mother, she sabotages her own efforts to perform well on the tests.

However, in the preceding paragraph, Tan reveals why Jing-mei feels compelled to rebel. Jing realizes that she will never do well enough on these tests to gain her mother's approval. Jing-mei laments that "after seeing, once again, my mother's disappointed face, something inside me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations" (1). Tan establishes the theme early, that is in Jing-mei's endless pursuit of her mother's approval, Jing-mei learns that not trying is less painful than trying and failing.

Jing-mei's next rebellion occurs during her training to become a piano prodigy. Her willful attempts to not master the piano songs she is to play at the show are clearly designed to impose her will on her own life at the expense of her mother. As Jing-mei states, "I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different" (2), she intentionally sabotages her preparation and is seemingly conscious of this as she is doing it.

Here again, Tan has balanced Jing-mei's rebellious actions with insight into her fear of failing her mother. In the preceding paragraph, she says "Why don't you like me the way I am?' I cried. 'I'm not a genius! I can't play the piano'" (2). Jing-mei is convinced that she cannot live up the her perception of her mother's expectations and that it would that not trying would make her hurt less. This is so even though her mother has assured Jing-mei that she does not expect her to be a genius.

When her mother enters her into the talent show, Jing-mei renews her resolve to rebel through poor preparation. She confesses: "I was supposed to memorize the whole thing. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed. 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 said she had lost everything" and "No accusations, No blame. And in a way, [she] felt disappointed" (3), it becomes clear that Jing-mei's rebellions have been a function of her need for mother's acceptance and approval.

Jing-mei needed her mother to express some form of emotion towards her. Even anger or hostility equates to emotion, which in turn equates to love. Jing-mei does not express devastation over her embarrassing performance or the snide remarks by the little boy or her cousin. Rather, her desire to rebel and her need for acceptance for her mother have intersected and not receiving the acceptance was devastating to her.

After the talent show, Jing-mei again rebelled by refusing to continue her piano lessons. After her and her mother had a battle of wills, Jing-mei believed she had won the battle by proclaiming that she wished she were dead, like her mother's first two children. Her mother was shocked into silence, which Jing-mei took as a victory: "It was as if I had said magic words. Alakazam!-her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned…" (3).

Jing-mei and her mother never resolved this conflict, rather they both dropped it permanently. And while Jing-mei refers to that exchange years later as her ultimate betrayal of her mother, she says the more frightening questions in her head was "Why had her mother given up hope" (4)? The notion that her mother would not continuously harass and nag her to be someone she was not or could not, was seen by Jing-mei as the ultimate sign that she had not won or earned her mother's acceptance or approval.

Professor Lilia Melani of Brooklyn College (CUNY) also identifies the apparent discrepancy between how Jing-mei believes she feels and how she actually feels. Melani states that disconnect between Jing-mei and her mothers can be explained by the communication failure which develops as a result of high-context culture mixing with low-context culture. In other words, the mother, being born in China, is used to high-context where "individual acquires cultural information and meaning from obedience to authority, through observation and by imitation" (Melani). Jing-mei's low-context up bringing in the U.S. promotes rampant misunderstandings and miscommunications between mothers and daughters (Melani).