Topical/Historical Critique
Student Name
Ms. Westrick
ENGL 1102
Month Day, Year
Ms. Westrick
ENGL 1102
Month Day, Year
Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” is a deeply interwoven short story chronicling the turbulent relationship of a Chinese-American daughter and her mother. Wedged at the heart of this narrative is the author’s commitment to provide a voice for Chinese-American narratives in literature. This commitment is evident in the juxtaposition of Jing Mei, born in America, to that of her mother who fled China for America in her adulthood. Tan uses specific literary elements such as, point of view, dialogue, and character to establish culture as a significant symbol in Asian-American and modern literature as a whole.
The short story “Two Kinds” was derived from Tan’s acclaimed novel The Joy Luck Club. While the novel is structured as so, Tan has stated that she intended for its audience to perceive the work as an anthology of short stories. (Souris 99) In that way, the audience is allowed to consider each chapter as an isolated event that lends to the development of each character and the literature in general. “Two Kinds” both introduces us to and examines a complex mother-daughter relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother. In the first line of the short story, “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America,” Tan establishes two things; Her mother’s beliefs are not her own and there is a cultural divide between the two women. (Roberts and Zweig 222) As the story develops Tan also quickly establishes point of view through the narrator, Jing Mei, and uses it to also introduce culture. In this instance, the point of view of both characters is directly correlated with one’s Chinese culture and the other’s Chinese-American culture and is the derivative of their divide. In her article, “Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Michelle Gaffner Wood discusses the mother-daughter divide as a concept that past relationships always influence present personal interactions. She further states,
“One’s inability to translate the past may have negative implications for present and future relationships.
The mother-daughter relationships in both China and the United States represented not only provide a link
between the past and the present but also suggest how the ability, or the inability, for mothers and daughters
to share geographically informed cultural stories influences both mother-daughter relationships and individual
and cultural identity.” (Wood)
Wood’s claim extends on the idea that it is Jing Mei’s mother past in China that shapes, or misshapes, her present point of view and the relationship with her daughter. Having come to America as an adult, Tan details what is seemingly a horrific life in China that includes the loss of the character’s first husband and twin daughters. In this retrospect, it is not lost upon as to why the mother is filled with a childlike amount of hope. However, for American born Jing Mei her point of view stems from a blurred cultural identity that is muddled with her mother’s hopes and their inability to intersect in the present.
While Tan introduces the symbolic effects of culture on point of view early on in the short story, the use of culture becomes more transparent through dialogue. In the short story Jing-Mei’s mother uses a broken-English vernacular, which highlights her Chinese heritage and is in stark contrast with the perfect English of her American born daughter. Additionally, even when the two characters are not directly engaging in dialogue with one another there are still exhibits of culture in Jing Mei’s narration. While trying to choose the “right kind of prodigy” she recalls her mother first believing she could be a “Chinese Shirley Temple”. (Roberts and Zweig 222) This particular scene can be symbolically recognized as the characters trying to find their Asian identity in American culture and the idea of the American dream. However, it is in what the two characters say to one another that fully brings to light Tan’s intentions with the mother and daughter. In her article, “Daughter-text/Mother-text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club”, Marina Heung analyzes the characters’ dialogue as, “…written in the voice of mothers, as well as those of daughters…combining both voices [into] a double voice.” (Heung) Heung goes on to discuss how the maternal voices indicate differences that stem from their unique cultural positioning and thus pivots the mother/daughter plot throughout the narrative. Considering Heung’s analysis and the short story itself Tan’s intent to create a multifunctional and multicultural dialogue between Jing Mei and her mother is to not only lend to her work but to the Asian-American narrative as a whole.
Like many other writings by women of color Tan uses character and characterization to, in essence, provide a visual depiction of culture. Also, in this way, the author provides a link between reality and fiction as the characters develop into identifiable women spanning over multiple cultures. The title “Two Kinds” is not just a direct reference to a speech made by Jing-Mei’s mother in the story but also a symbol for the cultural differences that separate the way each is characterized. In many ways Jing-Mei is characterized as entitled and unable to follow through, when analyzed her character could be perceived as the embodiment of American privilege. In juxtaposition, her mother is characterized as having an unfailing sense of expectation along with an unrealistic view solely attached to promise. However, considering culture, it is more beneficial to examine Jing-Mei’s mother, as it is her past life in China that definitively shapes her character. Scholar Ben Xu furthers the notion of the use of memory for character development in his article “Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” Specifically in the article he states, “The disposition for many first generation Chinese immigrants [is] to see life as a constant test of survival…it is deeply rooted in China’s past hardships.” (Xu 8) In accordance with Xu’s article, Tan molds the matriarchal character of the short story to symbolically represent her hardships even when they have been verbalized in the story. Through the creation and development of both the mother and daughter character culture is represented in “Two Kinds” in a way that renders it transferable to its reader’s personal self-identity experience.
Through the use of several literary elements, specifically point of view, dialogue, and character Amy Tan uses “Two Kinds” to introduce culture through the timeless mother-daughter narrative. Jing-Mei and her mother interweave the past and present, China and America, effortlessly through monologue, dialogue, and the former’s grapple with self-identity. The sense of a multilinked culture between the generations is felt as Jing-Mei, in essence, realizes her and her mother are “two halves of the same song.” (Roberts and Zweig 229) However, as the story concludes there is also a sense of realization through the matriarch character that conceivably the two cultures cannot equitably coexist within her American born daughter. This idea continued to be expressed throughout The Joy Luck Club, the short story’s derivative, through another matriarch character’s declaration of wanting her children to have an ideal combination of “American circumstances and Chinese character” yet coming to perceive that “these things do not mix.” (Tan 254) But Tan uses both mother and daughter realizations to bind a story of past, present, and future that is widely accepted as culturally effective for the Asian-American and feminist narrative.
The short story “Two Kinds” was derived from Tan’s acclaimed novel The Joy Luck Club. While the novel is structured as so, Tan has stated that she intended for its audience to perceive the work as an anthology of short stories. (Souris 99) In that way, the audience is allowed to consider each chapter as an isolated event that lends to the development of each character and the literature in general. “Two Kinds” both introduces us to and examines a complex mother-daughter relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother. In the first line of the short story, “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America,” Tan establishes two things; Her mother’s beliefs are not her own and there is a cultural divide between the two women. (Roberts and Zweig 222) As the story develops Tan also quickly establishes point of view through the narrator, Jing Mei, and uses it to also introduce culture. In this instance, the point of view of both characters is directly correlated with one’s Chinese culture and the other’s Chinese-American culture and is the derivative of their divide. In her article, “Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Michelle Gaffner Wood discusses the mother-daughter divide as a concept that past relationships always influence present personal interactions. She further states,
“One’s inability to translate the past may have negative implications for present and future relationships.
The mother-daughter relationships in both China and the United States represented not only provide a link
between the past and the present but also suggest how the ability, or the inability, for mothers and daughters
to share geographically informed cultural stories influences both mother-daughter relationships and individual
and cultural identity.” (Wood)
Wood’s claim extends on the idea that it is Jing Mei’s mother past in China that shapes, or misshapes, her present point of view and the relationship with her daughter. Having come to America as an adult, Tan details what is seemingly a horrific life in China that includes the loss of the character’s first husband and twin daughters. In this retrospect, it is not lost upon as to why the mother is filled with a childlike amount of hope. However, for American born Jing Mei her point of view stems from a blurred cultural identity that is muddled with her mother’s hopes and their inability to intersect in the present.
While Tan introduces the symbolic effects of culture on point of view early on in the short story, the use of culture becomes more transparent through dialogue. In the short story Jing-Mei’s mother uses a broken-English vernacular, which highlights her Chinese heritage and is in stark contrast with the perfect English of her American born daughter. Additionally, even when the two characters are not directly engaging in dialogue with one another there are still exhibits of culture in Jing Mei’s narration. While trying to choose the “right kind of prodigy” she recalls her mother first believing she could be a “Chinese Shirley Temple”. (Roberts and Zweig 222) This particular scene can be symbolically recognized as the characters trying to find their Asian identity in American culture and the idea of the American dream. However, it is in what the two characters say to one another that fully brings to light Tan’s intentions with the mother and daughter. In her article, “Daughter-text/Mother-text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club”, Marina Heung analyzes the characters’ dialogue as, “…written in the voice of mothers, as well as those of daughters…combining both voices [into] a double voice.” (Heung) Heung goes on to discuss how the maternal voices indicate differences that stem from their unique cultural positioning and thus pivots the mother/daughter plot throughout the narrative. Considering Heung’s analysis and the short story itself Tan’s intent to create a multifunctional and multicultural dialogue between Jing Mei and her mother is to not only lend to her work but to the Asian-American narrative as a whole.
Like many other writings by women of color Tan uses character and characterization to, in essence, provide a visual depiction of culture. Also, in this way, the author provides a link between reality and fiction as the characters develop into identifiable women spanning over multiple cultures. The title “Two Kinds” is not just a direct reference to a speech made by Jing-Mei’s mother in the story but also a symbol for the cultural differences that separate the way each is characterized. In many ways Jing-Mei is characterized as entitled and unable to follow through, when analyzed her character could be perceived as the embodiment of American privilege. In juxtaposition, her mother is characterized as having an unfailing sense of expectation along with an unrealistic view solely attached to promise. However, considering culture, it is more beneficial to examine Jing-Mei’s mother, as it is her past life in China that definitively shapes her character. Scholar Ben Xu furthers the notion of the use of memory for character development in his article “Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” Specifically in the article he states, “The disposition for many first generation Chinese immigrants [is] to see life as a constant test of survival…it is deeply rooted in China’s past hardships.” (Xu 8) In accordance with Xu’s article, Tan molds the matriarchal character of the short story to symbolically represent her hardships even when they have been verbalized in the story. Through the creation and development of both the mother and daughter character culture is represented in “Two Kinds” in a way that renders it transferable to its reader’s personal self-identity experience.
Through the use of several literary elements, specifically point of view, dialogue, and character Amy Tan uses “Two Kinds” to introduce culture through the timeless mother-daughter narrative. Jing-Mei and her mother interweave the past and present, China and America, effortlessly through monologue, dialogue, and the former’s grapple with self-identity. The sense of a multilinked culture between the generations is felt as Jing-Mei, in essence, realizes her and her mother are “two halves of the same song.” (Roberts and Zweig 229) However, as the story concludes there is also a sense of realization through the matriarch character that conceivably the two cultures cannot equitably coexist within her American born daughter. This idea continued to be expressed throughout The Joy Luck Club, the short story’s derivative, through another matriarch character’s declaration of wanting her children to have an ideal combination of “American circumstances and Chinese character” yet coming to perceive that “these things do not mix.” (Tan 254) But Tan uses both mother and daughter realizations to bind a story of past, present, and future that is widely accepted as culturally effective for the Asian-American and feminist narrative.
Works Cited
Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Fall93, p. 597. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.clayton.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=slh&AN=9406131742&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Souris, Stephen. "Only Two Kinds of Daughters": Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club." MELUS, no. 2, 1994, p. 99. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.clayton.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.467727&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989.
“Two Kinds.” Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing, by Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig, Pearson, 2015, pp. 222–228.
Wood, Michelle Gaffner. "Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club.." Midwest Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1, Sept. 2012, pp. 82-96. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.clayton.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=slh&AN=82542184&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club." MELUS, no. 1, 1994, p. 3. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2307/467784.
Souris, Stephen. "Only Two Kinds of Daughters": Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club." MELUS, no. 2, 1994, p. 99. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.clayton.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.467727&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989.
“Two Kinds.” Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing, by Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig, Pearson, 2015, pp. 222–228.
Wood, Michelle Gaffner. "Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club.." Midwest Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1, Sept. 2012, pp. 82-96. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.clayton.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=slh&AN=82542184&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club." MELUS, no. 1, 1994, p. 3. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2307/467784.