Two Kinds By Shirley Analysis

(1) “America was where all my mother’s hopes lay.” (2) In these words from “Two Kinds,” the narrator describes her mother’s belief that you can be anything you want to be in America even famous. (3) In her search for a better life than the one she left in China, the narrator’s mother pushes her daughter to become a child prodigy. (4) The narrator tries to fulfill her mother’s expectations at first. (5) Eventually, she does not want to be a prodigy. (6) The differing values between mother and daughter create conflict between them when the narrator begins to fail her mother deliberately. (7) The mother first tries to turn her daughter into a star like Shirley Temple the darling of the 1930s. (8) The narrator recalls this attempted process: “We’d watch
(13) The narrator works with a deaf piano teacher. (14) Then she stubbornly chooses not to practice and learn. (15) In ignorance, her mother enters her in a talent show. (16) The narrator’s performance is embarrassingly bad. (17) Why should this come as any surprise? (18) How can people succeed if they are not true to themselves? (19) Because the narrator feels that she is being forced to be someone she is not, she continues to fail her mother deliberately. (20) She describes her need to assert her independence when she states, “For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.” (21) The conflict between the two begins to heal when, years later, long after the daughter left home the narrator’s mother offers her daughter the piano. (22) When the narrator claims that she can no longer play, her mother disagrees and tells her that she has “natural talent.” (23) The narrator realizes that her mother has always believed in her. (24) The narrator’s desire for independence had kept her from understanding her mother’s pride in and love for her. (25) After her mother dies, the narrator discovers that she really can play the piano and may have been good at it had she tried