She had no confidence in her mother growing up, and saw her as a “limit” and an “embarrassment”. Later in Tan’s life, she found several surveys which led her to realize that she was not alone; there were other Asian-Americans who may have shared the same struggles as her. Tan creates a symbolic diction through the use of words like “broken”, “limited”, and “fractured”. She is very repetitive with her use of these words, although she explains how she hated when people described her mother’s english that way. Although Tan knows that the way her and her mother converse is not grammatically correct, she has grown to love it.
After a few weeks the mother and the old, deaf, retired piano teacher, Old Chong arrange for the daughter to go to a talent show in a church hall. After first having high hopes for herself the, daughter fails miserably on the piano in the talent show. After the talent show she then stands up to her mother who still wants her to take piano lessons. She then has feelings of guilt towards the end, since she can’t match her mother’s expectations. But then in the end she comes to good terms with her mother, when she offers her the piano she used to play on.
Not only does she want her to be a better chess player, but the narrator’s mother believes that her daughter could be a music prodigy and become famous. The desire to attain fame is not new idea to the narrator’s mother seeing as how she used to dress her daughter up like Shirley Temple and imagine her as a famous child
Kaira Gonzalez Akeelah and The Bee Paper English___________ 11/12/2009 Akeelah and The Bee Akeelah is an outstanding speller. Labeled as the brainiac in her school every student makes fun of her. Akeelah tries to keep her smarts to herself in order to protect herself from other students who mean harm to her. Akeelah is offered to go to the spelling bee nationals but she doesn’t want to be considered a freak if she accepts. No one from her school has ever had a offer like this.
Her mother decides that Jing-mei should be like Shirley Temple and takes her to have her haircut and curled. This does not turn out so her mother tries to blame Jing-mei. Next Jing-mei’s mother decides that Jing-mei should be a pianist after watching Ed Sullivan. Jing-mei hates piano lessons and asks her mother “Why don’t you like me the way I am?” After this event Jing-mei decides that she will never live up to her mother’s expectations, she then decides to quit trying. Similarities In “Two Kinds” the girl Jing-mei has to try to live up
Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” brings forth this epic battle between a mother who wants perfection for her daughter and the coming of age daughter who is struggling to find herself. This is a story that is shared by many mothers and daughters as the daughter struggles to find herself amongst the pressures of conformity pressed upon her by the mother who only wants the best for her and the society who tells her that she needs to make her own choices. In this story, however, there is an extra factor that plays a part in Tan’s story. This factor takes the normal mother daughter struggle and makes it a little unique. The difference is a cultural divide between a mother born and raised in China and her American born daughter.
For someone raised under the western parenting style this is something completely absurd, since this is not letting the kid have a “normal childhood”. The kid does not have the opportunity to do what he finds interesting and he does not enjoy his childhood to the fullest. If we define a good mother as someone who wants their child to be happy, Amy would be considered a horrible mother. Ever since Amy and Sophia were young they were forced by their mother to play an instrument. Most kids, rather play a sport or go outside and hang out with their friends but in this case they were had to practice the piano/violin so they could become the best of the best.
As a child, Walker believes that she can get whatever she wants or make people like her only by being a beautiful little girl. She shows that she is confident about this idea at the age of two and a half when she wants to go to the fair with her father and tells him "Take me daddy, I'm the prettiest” (Alice Walker, 150) while she parades around wearing a beautiful dress. As children, people often imitate the things they see, but they are not taken seriously, and many adults see these behaviors as being “child’s play”. Walker is imitating behaviors she has viewed from older women in her community and actresses in movies that she watched. The behavior that Walker showcases during the first stage of innocence is similar to the behaviors the character
When she moves to St. Louis and sees her mother for the first time, she is struck by her mother’s beauty. She thinks her mother is too beautiful to have children, and that is the reason why her mother sent her away. Marguerite thinks she is a “Black ugly girl”, at the same time, she is a girl full of imagination. She imagines once she puts her dream Easter dress on she will be a sweet little white girl with long and blond hair. She also imagines the conflict between her grandmother and the white dentist Dr. Lincoln after he said he would rather stick his hand in a dog’s mouth than treat Marguerite’s problem.
In most cases this is true, for when they grow up they eventually figure out that they can reflect (retrace) their problems to that of their parents, and later understand what they had to go through. In the story The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing-mei is (acts like) an ignorant girl to her mother. Whatever tactic her mother tries on her to make her a better person she rejects. Jing-mei is constantly trying to hide her Chinese heritage and even changes her name to “June” to conform to American ways. But as she moves on in life, she begins to regret her past actions and finds out that her mother’s difficulties and problems, are (now) put on her shoulders and (now) for her to solve.