I am becoming Chinese” (Tan 251). The last few words serve as the beginning of June May accepting she is in fact Chinese. Today June May had realized what it really means to be Chinese. Her mother has passed and she is on a train with her father. She speaks of “carrying with me her dreams of coming home.
As she is able to separate, she looks back at her culture fondly rather than with anger. The last talk-story Kingston adds to her memoir is a collaboration of China and America, old and new. She leads into the story with, “The beginning is hers her mother’s, the ending mine Kingston” (206). Kingston acknowledges that while she may still be strongly influenced by her mother and her Chinese culture, she is in the process of breaking away to create a personal identity. This is the first time that Kingston explicitly tells which additions to the story are her own.
The poem begins with the perspective of the sister in China as she describes the tradition of her people and the adaptations they have made. After some brief background into the Chinese culture, Song moves to focus on the relationship between the speaker and her sister. “And the daughters were grateful: They never left home. To move freely was a luxury stolen from them at birth” (Song); Song uses these lines to describe the realities that come with living in China and the idea that one may never actually leave to discover America. In the first part of the poem Song conveys that the life lived in China is not a glorious one.
The novel traces the psychological development of the American daughter and her final acceptance of the Chinese mother and what the Chinese mother stands for. It is interesting to note that when Jing-mei Woo is asked by her three “aunts” to go to China in order to fulfill her mother’s long-cherished wish to meet her lost twin babies, Jing-mei shocks and upsets
“Two Kinds” is a story about a girl and her family, who moved to the Americas. Jing-mei went through different prodigies or prodigy attempts, trying to please her family. Both of the stories had the same cultural backgrounds. Mulan is a story located back in Ancient China (Mulan); “Two Kinds” is about a family who lived in China and then moved to San Francisco in 1949 (Tan, 124). Much of the Chinese values moved with them to America.
ENGL 110 Essay 1 Final Draft Yi Zhang Cultural and Generation Conflict “Two kinds” is a story about the conflict between a Chinese-American girl Jing Mei and her mother. They immigrated from China to the United State and when Jing Mei was a little girl, her mother tried to discover Jing Mei’s prodigy. At first Jing Mei is also curious about being a prodigy but finally she lose interest in it. The author Amy Tan develops her theme of cultural and generation conflict through the choice of an appropriate setting, the use of strong character development, and strong plot development including exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution. The setting of the story establishes an appropriate background for the characters’ traits and leads to the exposition between two characters.
Lilly was worried about this because Snow Flower was from a higher class than her. The concept of a lao tong is two women who give each other themselves in friendship. Snow Flower and Lilly write back and forth on a silk fan in Nushu, a secret language that only women knew about. As the story progresses Lily marries a scholar's nephew who belonged to one of the richest families in China while Snow Flower marries a butcher, which was seen as low class. They stay in touch throughout the years by the fans and meetings but their relationship falters when Lily misunderstands a message from Snow Flower.
Unlke Yunior, she did not grow up in another country. Her struggle deals with finding an identity as a Chinese- American. Unlike the Domincan culture, which seems to be outspoken and open, the Chinese seem to encourage silence and secrets. The novel begins with Kingston’s mother saying, “You must not tell anyone,” before sharing the story with her daughter. - Silence is encouraged in their culture, allowing Kingston to develop into a shy, awkward girl with trouble adjusting.
In the beginning of “The struggle to be an All American girl”, Elizabeth Wong started out with describing Chinese school in her living town and wrote about her and her brother’s experience of changing their culture from Chinese to American since they were children. They went to the Chinese school because her mother pretention to keep their cultural estate even though they hated it. At the school, they learned not only Chinese but politeness as well. The school in her memory smelled like “mothballs or dirty closet”, and the principal was look like a “maniacal child killer”. She also described her learning Chinese like the most boring thing in the word by using some words as: “kowtow”, “chant”, “sing-san-ho” and ideographs letters.
Two Kinds Every day somewhere in the world, a mother’s expectations for their daughter to succeed in life may come from what she has lost prior to her daughter being born. Amy Tan, the author of the short story “Two Kinds”, teaches a valuable lesson in a mother- daughter relationship. The mother a Chinese immigrant was determined her daughter; Jeing-Mei a first generation Chinese American was to become a prodigy. The theme of “Two Kinds” expresses how a mother’s dream for her daughter to be successful in America can turn a daughter away from her own identity. Jeing-Mei believes that America will give her the identity she wants without having to work for it.