Two Kinds: Analysis of Main Ideas

Unattainable parental expectations lead to childhood rebellion.

Jing-mei’s mother believes that anything is possible in America as long as one tries. She believes that Jing-mei can be a prodigy if she simply makes the effort to excel, and Jing-mei initially shares her belief. But her mother chooses the most exceptional children to serve as role models for Jing-mei, and in doing so, she sets up her daughter for failure. Her quest to discover greatness in Jing-mei suggests to her daughter that she is not already acceptable just as she is. Jing-mei longs to become perfect and to win her mother’s approval, but perfection is unattainable, and her mother’s fervor in testing her daughter to draw out her talents proves harmful. After many failures, Jing-mei feels that she can never make her mother happy. She also internalizes her mother’s disappointment to the point that she feels sad and ugly. To protect herself from her mother’s damaging dissatisfaction and to take back control of her life, Jing-mei conjures her true self: a girl who wields power by being angry and obstinate. Jing-mei’s refusal to properly learn piano is one of many rebellions she will wage to punish her mother and retain control over her identity. Jing-mei’s revolt ends only with her mother’s death when she sits down to play the piano as an adult. She learns that she has retained the talent she always had and could have explored if not for her mother’s unreasonable expectations.

Childhood trauma looks different with the perspective of age.

Jing-mei narrates the story as an adult reflecting on this conflict and comes to understand her mother in a way she never had before. She opens by discussing her mother’s history and struggles. By putting this at the forefront, Tan shows Jing-mei’s sympathy for her mother’s point of view. This opens up the narrative to a sense of regret that underlies Jing-mei’s repeated failures and indiscretions. Jing-mei’s continued pattern of purposefully crushing her mother’s hope and pride with failure has also robbed her of the chance to excel through education. She reiterates that she did not believe she could be exactly what her mother wanted her to be, and that she could only be her ordinary self. Because she and her mother never discussed the piano incident, Jing-mei is left to interpret, discover, and question why her mother had astronomical expectations doomed for failure and also why she lost hope. In adulthood, Jing-mei realizes that she has longed for her mother’s forgiveness, and she finally receives it the form of the piano. Her mother’s offer of the piano is a reconciliation, and because of her insistence that Jing-mei can still be a genius if she wants to, Jing-mei is able to view her mother’s actions with a softer understanding. After her mother’s death, when Jing-mei finds that “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Content” are two parts of the same song, she realizes that the two kinds of daughters her mother spoke of in her childhood can also be one and the same.

Age, cultural differences, and trauma can lead to cross-generational miscommunication.

Jing-mei’s mother carries a lifetime of struggle and trauma, while Jing-mei has a naïve and underdeveloped child’s outlook. As they try to communicate, each one’s perspective causes misunderstandings between them. As a child, Jing-mei is still forming her personality, and she is determined to not let herself be defined by her mother’s disappointment. Because she does not understand herself, she cannot separate her mother’s desires from who she is as a person. This causes Jing-mei to foolishly define herself by her failures while her mother wisely tries to take advantage of any opportunities for improvement.

Jing-mei and her mother also come from two different worlds. Jing-mei opens the story with her mother’s past because it is the thing her mother couldn’t speak of, though it is also the driving force behind most of her actions. Jing-mei’s mother fled Communist rule in China, does not fully grasp American culture aside from materialism and fame, and has difficulty with the English language. Because she came from a country where hard work didn’t always mean success, the idea of the American Dream is very important to her. Jing-mei, having been born in the United States, doesn’t understand her mother’s perspective and thinks she is being cruel in pushing Jing-mei to be the best. Jing-mei’s mother wants to make up for her past, but in doing so, she puts the weight of her entire history on her daughter’s shoulders. Jing-mei is left wondering why her mother’s hopes were so high that it made failure inevitable. It isn’t until Jing-mei becomes an adult that she realizes that her mother only ever wanted her to be the best version of herself.

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