Two Kinds

“At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple.” 

The narrator describes this figure of the Chinese Shirley Temple after watching old movies of the curly-haired child actress singing and dancing. Her mother encouraged her to imitate the actress, going as far as to try to get her hair to look like Shirley Temple. There is a disconnect between not only her mother’s faith in her and the narrator’s natural ability, but also the mother’s means of equalizing the two.

“‘Peter Pan is very popular these days,’ the instructor assured my mother.” 

There is humor in the disaster underlying this story. After visiting the salon for her transformation, the narrator is left with a severe, boyish haircut. The hairdresser in training tries to claim that the look is fashionable, while the mother laments. The narrator, on the other hand, finds the cut liberating – her opinion is, as usual, at odds with her mother’s, who of course is not asking her or paying any attention to her daughter’s reactions.

“In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so.” 

While this does not remain a constant, the narrator reveals that in its first phase, she was on board with her mother’s encouragement and felt a desire to go forward with her mother’s vision for her daughter. She pictures herself as a “prodigy,” trying on many iterations of the word to get a sense of her own capabilities. Her sense of reality is childlike and skewed; she imagines herself transforming into a ballerina and compares herself to baby Jesus in the manger and Cinderella. 

“In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect.”

The mother’s explosive sense of possibility has caught a spark in her daughter. As a young girl, she believes she is capable of anything. This image of herself as “perfect” is unfortunately never going to come to fruition. No one is perfect; her mother does not have the financial or personal abilities necessary to give her daughter the life she outlines for her. Without meaning to, she is setting her daughter up to fail.

“My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she cleaned many houses each week, we had a great assortment.” 

In this subtle way, Amy Tan uses the narrative voice to introduce integral themes (such as class) into the story. While the narrator is now an adult herself, by dipping into memory, Tan uses a child’s observation of her mother to expose and shape the dimensions of their life in America. Her mother is a housekeeper, but this is not something the reader learns in a straightforward way; this passage is about the narrator and her perceived problems. Her mother’s lifestyle and the sacrifices she is making are secondary and to be gleaned in fleeting, throwaway moments such as this.

“All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown.” 

This is another humorous passage that Tan uses to import information to the reader; here, the narrator exposes her lack of geographical knowledge by confessing she has learned the capital of California because of its relevance to her own life in Chinatown. She is also giving the reader a clearer picture of her surroundings by grounding herself in this “Chinatown,” a place where many Asian immigrants would have settled down—stereotypically, not always the wealthiest area of the city.

“Before going to bed that night, I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when I saw only my face staring back—and that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry.” 

The narrator refers to herself in this paragraph as a “sad, ugly girl” who will never be capable of the mental leaps her mother expects of her. For hours each evening, the two go over practice tests to define the bounds of her capabilities across a variety of subjects. Constantly disappointing her mother is taking a toll on the narrator and giving her a defeatist attitude quite at odds with her initial confidence. She describes this feeling as “thoughts filled with lots of won’ts.”

“‘What are you picking on her for?’ I said carelessly. ‘She’s pretty good. Maybe she’s not the best, but she’s trying hard.’” 

A few months later, her mother sees a young Chinese girl on the television who is an excellent piano player. Goading her, the mother criticizes the performer, and the narrator comes to her defense, unwittingly trapping herself in another of her mother’s half-baked attempts to boost her daughter into show business. Just when the narrator believes she has freed herself from her mother’s expectations, she is pulled back into her world.

“The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, left leg bends, look up and smile.” 

When rivalry breaks out between Auntie Lindo and Jing-mei’s mother, they formulate a talent show to show off their daughters’ abilities. While Waverly, Auntie Lindo’s daughter, is known as “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess Champion,” the narrator will have considerably more trouble with her talent, playing the piano. Her lessons with the deaf neighbor, Mr. Chong, have not panned out as her mother perceives, and Jing-mei confesses that what she’s most interested in practicing is the curtsy—not the piece itself.

“I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. I remember thinking to myself, This is it! This is it!” 

Despite her lack of drive to practice properly for her stage debut, her mother’s enthusiasm and Mr. Chong’s inability to hear her properly have led the narrator to develop an ego surrounding her abilities as a pianist. She approaches the talent show without fear of failure, actually expecting to prove her prodigal abilities to the Joy Luck Club. She reveals this to the reader from the distance now of an adult, wondering at her own former naivety, and how wrong she was.

“The room was quiet, except for Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting, ‘Bravo! Bravo! Well done!’”

After her dismal performance at the talent show, the narrator registers that she has underperformed—hitting all the wrong notes and leaving the audience speechless. She feels the presence of the audience, and is affected by the “shame of my mother and father” sitting motionless to the end of the show. Worst of all, her father’s reaction—“That was somethin’ else”—leaves the narrator unsure whether he is joking or has already forgotten her performance.

“‘Only two kinds of daughters,’ she shouted in Chinese. ‘Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!’”

The climactic fight between the narrator and her mother over her future as a pianist occurs soon after the talent show debacle. Jing-mei, feeling defeated and knowing she will never be a “genius,” refuses to practice. In anger and frustration, the narrator admits she will never live up to her mother’s standards. Her mother reacts as expected, reminding her of the value she places on obedience at the expense of listening to her child’s desires. 

“‘Then I wish I’d never been born!’ I shouted. ‘I wish I were dead! Like them.’”

Before coming to America, Jing-mei’s mother lost the majority of her family in China. This angry admission from the narrator speaks back to a passage on Page 2, where Jing-mei lists the people her mother lost: “her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.” It is unclear what happened to them, we are only given clues that it had something to do with World War II—her mother arrived, orphaned and widowed, in 1949. An admission like this on Jing-mei’s part would be a devastating blow to her mother and contrasts the smallness of Jing-mei’s problems with those that her mother has already faced.