Two Kinds

The story “Two Kinds” is written by Amy Tan. The story comes from a collection of short stories called “The Joy Luck Club” with was published the year 1989. The text questions whether a mother should press her child to be something big or whether the child should do the things it wants to do.
The story takes place in the United States of America in the 1950s. The perspective in the story is seen from a first person narrator. The family is working class because they cannot afford a piano but they have a TV that not a thing everyone had in the 1950s.
The narrator of the text is a girl named Ni Kan. She is nine years old in the start of the text. Her family comes from China but she lives in the USA with her mother and stepfather. In the start of the text Ni Kan´s relationship to her mother is fine because she agrees with her mother. She wants to be famous like her mother wants her to be. She tries a lot of different things like being ballerina girl or an actor. And at the night the mother asks a lot of question to Ni Kan. But one day Ni Kan, has had enough of it and do not want to do those things anymore and thus defy her mother's will. Form that day on the relationship to her mother gets bad. The relationship becomes even worse because Ni Kan still don’t wants to do the stuff her mother wants so her mother force her to play the piano and one day she had to play a concert. The concert when really badly and her mother was very disappointed over Ni Kan. The next day Ni Kan´s mother still wants her to continue playing the piano but Ni Kan refuse to do it. They start a big argument and Ni Kan says: “I wish I were dead! Like them.” After that her mother gave up on her on her daughter and the dream that one day her daughter would be famous. But at the end of the text when Ni Kan do not live at home her mother asks her if she wants her old piano and therefore Ni Kan feels like their relationship is good again.
The mother to Ni Kan came to San Francisco in 1949s after she had lost everything back in China. She had lost her mother and her father, her home, her first husband, and daughters. The two daughters where twin baby girls. She lives together with her husband and her daughter Ni Kan. She works as a cleaning lady. She cleans rich people’s houses. Even though she has experienced at lot of very bad stuff it hasn’t ruined her good mood but just made her stronger shows how strong a character she is. Ni Kan´s mother has the typical Chinese values. She expects that Ni Kan works hard and be obedient.
A theme in this text is that parents should learn to treat their children in the right way so their children will success. You cannot press your children to must because then they will achieve nothing. Another theme is that in the text two kinds of culture meets each other and it creates a lot of conflicts, in this case it is Asian and American culture.
The title of the text takes part in the thing Ni kan´s mother says about that there are two kinds of daughters: “Only two kinds of daughters… Those who are obedient and those who follow their own minds! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. An obedient daughter!” This sentence shows Ni Kan´s mother´s values and the differences between the mother and the daughter and is it very important for the story. Is shows that there are two kinds of daughters the one kind which Ni Kan is and the kind her mother wants her to be.
The ending of the text shows that the mother never losses faith in the fact that her daughter can become everything that she wants as long as she tries. It also shows that the mother loves Ni Kan even thought that she didn't turn out the way her mother would had wanted it to.