Mother-Daughter Conflict in “two Kinds”

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The conflict between mother and daughter climaxes with a battle of wills. The Chinese mother believes children should be obedient and conform to the wishes of their parents. Her Americanized daughter on the other hand is willful and determined to be her own person not what her mother wants her to be. After the talent show, Jing-Mei hopes her mother has given up on her. But her mother still insist on her practicing the piano. This results in a verbal confrontation between mother and daughter where each makes their stance clear:

"You want me to be something that I'm not!" I sobbed. "I'll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!"

"Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!" "Then I wish I weren't your daughter, I wish you weren't my mother," I shouted. As I said these things I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, that this awful side of me had surfaced, at last”. (311-312)

Jing-Mei spitefully lashed out at her mother during this confrontation by bringing up her dead sisters who had been lost in China. This is the moment when Jing-Mei finally succeeded to make her mother give up on her. After this time she failed her mother in many different ways: “It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her many times, each time asserting my will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didn't get straight As. I didn't become class president. I didn't get into Stanford. I dropped out of college” (312).

In conclusion, conflict seems to be a part of every mother-daughter relationship. But conflicts can be precipitated by cultural and generational differences between mother and daughter as seen in Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”. Such conflicts can be made worse when parents try to force their children to fit in a particular mold. Some parents even try to live out their dreams through their children just like the mother in this story. Children in such situations struggle with living up to their parent’s expectations and finding their own identity.

Works Cited

Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th

ed. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford, 2012. 305-313.Print.

Hyote, Kirsten Dinnall. “Contradiction and Culture: Revisiting Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”

(Again).” The Minnesota Review 61-62 (2004): 161-169. Web. 22 February 2016.

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