” Two Kinds ” by Amy Tan i s a short story about finding one’s true self. The main character Jing-Mei tries throughout her childhood to please her mother’s wishes and expectations of her. Jing-Mei’s mother is an immigrant from China and she believes that in America you can be anything you want to be as long as you are willing to set your mind to it. She has very over the top expectations for Jing-Mei and as a result Jing-Mei begins to rebel and finds that her strength in life is knowing that she can’t be anything she wants she can simply be what she is. Their relationship is always strained and it isn’t until her mother’s death that Jing-Mei is finally able to come to terms with this relationship and realize that her mother did indeed love her even though Jing-Mei thought otherwise. She realizes that by coming to terms with herself she can finally come to terms with her mother.
Even though the story is sad because Jing-Mei is being turned into something she clearly is not there are still some comical aspects to the story. For example when Jing-Mei has to get a boy haircut because her mother wanted her to get a perm so she can look like Shirley Temple. However, she is taken to a beauty school and Jing-Mei ends up looking “like Negro Chinese” according to her mother and as a result she has to cut her hair. It’s also funny when her mother signs her up to get piano lessons from a deaf man. The story over all is very good and heartfelt and i feel that Tan is telling this story to get the reader to understand that trying to be someone else is difficult and it can lead to problems with the people that we love the most. Then ending to me seemed like the best part because the narrator had finally accepted her relationship with her mother and had accepted that despite the mistakes she had committed her mother still loved her.
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