Amy Tan's Two Halves Of The Same Song

Two Halves of the Same Song “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (526). This is the first sentence in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan spoken by the narrator’s point of view, Jing-mei, the daughter. The story was a direct reflection of love vs. rebellion with the mother and the daughter, presented in a humorous almost sounding sarcastic tone to show the two kinds of people in the story; the one the mother thought the daughter should be and the one the daughter thought she should be, and in the end they realized that that was the same person. The story begins by giving humor to some of the mothers beliefs as if they were silly; such as in America a person is unlimited to what they could be even if that is to be famous
The idea of Jing-mei playing the piano was odd, because her mother was watching an American TV show and saw a young Chinese girl playing. “Ni-Kan” her mother would say which meant, you watch, and then made her practice the piano day after day to become better than the Chinese girl on TV. After this point the daughter rebels against the mother trying to fail to prove that this is who she was, “ordinary”. If she didn’t try at anything she couldn’t fail. The daughter didn’t realize how proud her mother was of her just for trying. In the earlier days when you were born you were born into a certain class, and that class defined who you could become in life whether it be a king, farmer, merchant, or a blacksmith. In this story the situation seems very similar. Why would Jing-mei want to be famous or talented when her mother was merely a house cleaner? Maybe she was content with the life she was born into and didn’t feel as if she needed to be talented to be happy. Her mother put her in a recital bragging to her friends how Jing-mei loved to play the piano. This was her opportunity to show her mother who she was and it wasn’t the person she wanted her to be, so Jing-mei went up and played