“Two Kinds” is a short story within Amy tan’s most popular novel, The Joy Luck Club. The book is divided into four connected sections with each containing a group of stories that could stand alone. Similar to the other short stories within the collection, “Two Kinds” is a representation of the complexities mother-daughter relationships encounter in San Francisco’s China-town. The focus of the story is the troublesome but unavoidable gap between mothers born in China before the communist revolution and their American-born daughters who must settle the burden of their Chinese ancestry and American dream of success. Although the protagonist of the story Jing-Mei constantly pushes away her mother’s desires to make her a musical prodigy, she gains insight into her mother’s reasoning decades later. Tan’s short story “Two Kinds” is a powerful work over the problems of self-identity and community in America during the twentieth century. Amy Tan explores the multicultural nation of America by the use of many literary tools without compromising the quality of the story. She uses a first person point of view to share the mother’s attempts to control her daughter’s aspirations and dreams, providing a better understanding of how their relationship worsens. While many see Amy Tan as a major figure of the collective voice of …show more content…
In “Two Kinds”, Tan builds up the romantic concept of cultural essence and loss of ethnic roots in order to thoroughly erode and reconstruct the idea of cultural essence. The mother-daughter relationship is symbolized by the comparison of native-foreigner. For example, “the narrative of separation and return –symbolized by Jing-Mei’s return to China/ mother –on the plot level is questioned by the rhetorical structure of the text which undercuts any notions of simple identification of origins or of a cultural “reality” easily available for access” (Bloom,
Two protagonists of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Lindo and Waverly Jong live the lives of a usual Chinese mother, and American daughter. They live through struggles, and although both go through journeys, there are key distinctions in which the Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey. The Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey, primarily due to their lack of sacrifice for the purpose
Living an inauthentic life can be dangerous, and while it can be done to gain benefits, as African American women passing as white to gain benefits, it often has dire consequences. Nella Larsen's exploration of passing in Passing shows that living an inauthentic life can come with great risks, and can lead to a human tragedy. The consequences of living an inauthentic life are not only felt by Irene and Clare, but by those around them as well. As Irene and Clare are passing as white, they are causing confusion and chaos in the lives of their families and friends. Irene’s husband, Brian, is unaware of her racial identity and is perplexed by her behavior.
The experiences related and recorded in the novels The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, and Obasan by Joy Kogawa give great insight to the internal and external struggles East-Asian immigrants face in the Western World, specifically Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Japanese-Canadians. Although the situations have certainly improved since the mid twentieth century, many of the issues and struggles the characters in the novels face are still real and ever-expanding for over five percent of the U.S. population. To
Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.
In Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, the different stories show how the different characters develop and progress. Rose Hsu Jordan begins “Half and Half” as someone who clearly lacks of conviction as she allows everyone but her to make decisions. Throughout “Without Wood”, however, Rose Hsu Jordan begins to learn, with the help of her mother, how to speak up.
Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary
The Rebellious Daughter: Analyzing the Theme of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” The story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan explores the deep familial emotions between a mother and her daughter. Jing-Mei’s mother had left China to come to America after losing her family, and had been raising Jing-Mei in America with her second husband. Despite her mother’s grand hopes for Jing-Mei to become successful in America by becoming a child prodigy, Jing-Mei did not share the same opinions.
Joy luck only exist among these mothers is because they 've all went through certain tough experience to finally get to where they are today, where they finally have happiness. Unlike June Woo and the other daughters, they were born in America, they did not need to go through what their mothers have went through. Maybe the word joy luck does not exist in the exact form to these daughters but joy luck does certainly exists in a similar form to them. This is because these daughter grew up with the American culture dominating over their Chinese heritage. As a daughter to an Chinese mother that migrated to America, I understand this tale very well.
People may think that movies aren't as different as their book counterpart. While that may be true, there are many aspects between the book and the movie that aren't as similar. The book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan share many similarities and differences with the movie by the same name. The book and the movie possess similar qualities; nevertheless there are many parts where the movie diverged from the book. However, although there are many differences, both movie and book place an emphasis on the same themes.
Thesis Statement about theme of literary work- In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, expressions of love and hatred are shown in multiple mother-daughter relationships resulting in negative impacts such as pain, bitterness, and regret because of their differing opinions. Support Point #1- Suyuan Woo guiltily leaves her twin daughters on the ground in China as she walks away in tears.
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author who was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. In Tan’s early life she had many struggles because her parents desired for her “to hold onto Chinese traditions and her own longings to become more Americanized” (Encyclopedia). While she wanted to become a writer when she was still young, her parents wanted her to become a neurosurgeon. When she got older and went to college she majored in English then started her career in the 1970’s. She was a technical writer and then started writing fiction stories.
Mother Knows Best Often times in literature, character relationships change and evolve. “Two Kinds” written by Amy Tan, is a story about a daughter’s uncertain feelings toward her mother. Overtime, the mother-daughter relationship gets ruined when the daughter does not believe in her potential to be a child prodigy as strongly as her mother does. After an attentive analysis of the story, the reader is aware of how Jing-mei’s feelings toward her mother changes, why they did so, and how those changes affected the entire story.
In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on the fact that the bond between a mother and daughter can overcome any ethnic barrier. Despite there being many disagreements and arguments about the ways to live their lives, Tan defies this issue by creating a bond that is unbreakable even though the experienced different upbringings. Certain disagreements keep the novel interesting and create a conflict depicting the problems stemming from this barrier. Through her use of similes, metaphors, and flashbacks, Tan shows how the bond between a mother and daughter can withstand even the strongest cultural differences.