51 pages • 1 hour read
Amy TanTwo Kinds
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Essay Topics
Amy Tan chooses to frame this story from a significant narrative distance. The story’s plot takes place when Jing-Mei was a young girl, but she is telling it from the perspective of a woman in her mid-thirties. Compare this with the passage of time in another short story you have read. How did they each serve the narrative differently? List and explain potential reasons for Tan’s decision.
As one story amongst many that make up the linked short story collection of the Joy Luck Club, “Two Kinds” focuses on a particular aspect of the character of Jing-Mei. These characters drop in and out of focus; someone who may be a central figure in another story may find their perspective to be merely a peripheral one here. Why has Tan singled this memory out as significant to Jing-Mei’s character? What is this story doing for its narrator that another perspective could not have achieved?
While its use in the story is subtle, the setting of “Two Kinds” provides a Chinatown where the local church’s talent show can be the backdrop for an ongoing family feud, and a home where a daughter’s fight for autonomy is on stark display and goes wholly unnoticed. How has Amy Tan made use of this element of style? Quote three passages involving setting and explain their significance in this story.
“Two Kinds” places the reader in an immigrant community, with a first-generation Chinese-American family as its focus. How does Amy Tan portray these characters within their communities? What tropes does she use, and how does she break them down to create three-dimensional characters? Use examples from the story.
What is it about the narrator’s voice that matters? How is this perspective on this topic in demand? Using examples from “Two Kinds”, hypothesize and explain why a reader might find this particular narrative important. Consider the year it was published and the political and social climate at that time.
Amy Tan pulls the title of this story from the climactic argument between the narrator and her mother. Locate this portion of the argument. What are the two women fighting about? How do they resolve their differences? Consider the resolution of the story. Do the two characters ever find closure? What does this story say overall regarding the nature of maternal bonds?
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