Amy Tan’s ‘Two Kinds’, tentatively so named reminds us there will always be a difference between how parents view their kids and how the kids view themselves. While neither of the ideas may turn out to be true in the end, as it is only impossible to predict what future one holds, there will eventually be a continuum between the ideas when we realise we are not too different from what our parents thought us to be. Amy Tan’s short story marks the natural progression of conflict between parents and children and its profundity lies both in the choice of cultural pretext and the contrast between the two main characters. Also worth pondering upon, is the sudden momentum in time that the narrative gains after delving into so much detail about the activities and life of Jing-mei as a child. As readers, we expect to find a different aspect of identity to Jing-mei’s growing self which is not just an inverse of what her mother identifies in her, but something independent of her mother’s opinion entirely. The lack of this and the absence of any actual information about Jing-mei’s life after she grew up signifies Amy Tan’s commitment to the mother-daughter relationship and how she views this as the most important variable or even obstacle to finding oneself.
The cultural pretext of the story relates to the ‘idea of America’ in immigrants and people from other cultures and countries, that is relevant to even this day. Fame hadn’t found it’s expression anywhere else the way it did in America since the very beginning. The idea of being ‘someone else’, being adored and appreciated for whatever talent you have, despite your cultural origins and difficult past is clearly expressed in the story through the character of the mother. But the fact that she herself would not choose any other role to being a working mother seeking respect in her own immigrant Chinese community shows the essentially eastern way of thinking where children are the only hope for change. This is not a defect in the personality, however, as the faith she has in her daughter and the creativity and ardour with which she looks for ways to discover the child’s prodigy clearly shows courage. Jing-mei’s mother seeks to be respected in her immigrant Chinese community and since the very definition of being an immigrant involves seeking a different destiny, when it comes to her daughter, only the heights of such a destiny will do. And she believes that by making her the best, this destiny could be easily reached. Says she, in the middle of a brewing fight, “Who ask you to be genius? Only ask you be your best. For you sake.” (Tan 195).
The mother-daughter relationship is explored fully in this single vein of thought, with the narrative bringing out both the best and worst in the characters. Amy Tan dives into the mind of a young girl with such clarity that the associations between attributes like fame and television, skill and genius, the act of performing and just ‘looking pretty’ can not only be seen in ways that a child sees them, but also society in general. The simple mind of Jing-mei absorbs without question, the superficial elements of the culture presented to her, that the conflict between her and her mother not only brings to question the divides between generations, but also the impact of cultural confluence on young minds. Should Jing-mei be a sweet and obedient Chinese daughter the way used to be or should she be American version of it - beautiful, famous and genius - as she sees it? Her mother was indeed right in pointing out the two kinds of daughters, but by this point, the root of the conflict becomes painfully obvious as obedience she had in Jing-mei all along, but it was she who wanted different. She wanted a prodigy. Jing-mei on the other hand, young as she is, though slowly developing resistance still accepts both versions of the daughter her mother wants as we see in the scene of her performance. Though her original intention was to put an end to her mother’s silly assumptions about her musical talent, she genuinely believes she is a star once she walks on that stage just because she possessed for the moment, the superficial elements like fame and beauty. “It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist,” she says (Tan 197). She assumed that genius was bound to follow. And when it doesn’t, she finale begins to separate the ‘two kinds’ in her own way as genius and non-genius, resigning herself to the category she thinks she belongs to.
The mother’s intuitive recognition of her daughter’s genius (or natural skill) had always been the saving grace of the parent-child conflict depicted in Two Kinds. It was only a matter of time before Jing-mei herself recognises what her mother sees in her. And this final crescendo was reached in the narrative through latent skips in the timeline, as is reflected in the conclusion of the story - “‘Pleading Child’ was shorter but slower; ‘Perfectly Contented’ was longer but faster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song” (Tan 199). The story was left at the crux of its narration with so much attention to detail, in order to paint a brilliant picture of the mother-daughter conflict, and it skipped way ahead, covering longer periods of time while tempo was gained through distantly spaced events like her mother giving her the childhood piano without regret or anger, her passing away and Jing-mei sending in a tuner, etc. Brilliantly thus constructed, the story never strays to say much about the characters themselves, but keeps the reader through and through, finely balanced, as it guides them along this one subtle thread that connects a mother to her daughter.
Work Cited
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 5th ed. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts, Robert Zweig. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2011. 192-199. Print.
