Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” and “Best Quality” Essay

Amy topazs dickens Kinds and Best role depict a struggling and often disagreeable kinship between a defiant daughter and an overbearing generate. June Mei and her incur Suyuan engage in a destructive battle between what is possible and what is realistic. June, although headstrong, seeks her fetchs approval and adoration. Suyuan, although patronizing, yearns for her daughters deference and best qualities. The race between have and daughter falls victim to tension inherent in any begin/daughter agitate, especially between first-generation Ameri force out daughters and their immigrant mothers (Yglesias 1). Their inability to take in one a nonher(prenominal) largely stems from ethnical differences Suyuan is a Chinese woman who flees to America for a interrupt life, while June is bound to demonstrate her egotism-worth as a Chinese-Ameri stick out. Due to distressed conversational mesh topologys, June and Suyuan maintain a staggering relationship, which in conclusion en ds in Suyuans poignant move intoance of her daughters individuality and cultural evolution.One of the close to prominent cultural barriers June and Suyuan suffer from is communication. Suyuan remains a cultural alien in America because she is a first generation immigrant from mainland China (Xu 3). As a result, Suyuan speaks Chinese and broken English, while June speaks English and fractured Chinese. Furthermore, the communication barrier seems to be dickens-fold between generations and cultures (Shear 194). The first generational and cultural gap materializes in Two Kinds when June announces her insubstantial defiance by saying, Why dont you like me the way I am? Im not a genius Her overbearing mother retorts in her fragile English, Who ask you be genius? Only ask you be your best. For you sake (Tan 597). This short dialogue is extremely brandificant as it reveals the cultural tension between Suyuan and June, thus causing a bitter mother/daughter conflict. Junes difficulty in comprehending her mother echoes Suyuans frustration at her inability to pass on the benefits of her accumulate wisdom and experience (Rubin 13). Suyuans frail English, concurrent with Junes adolescent will to defy her mother, exposit the communication and culture nets they must overcome.Another example of their sh bed dilemma begins with Junes timid chemical reaction toher mothers carrying of her lifes importance twenty years later in Best Quality. Suyuan offers June her lifes importance, a sap pendant on a gold mountain chain (Tan 221). Cultural and generational gaps illuminate the root of Junes uncertainty about this jade pendant Suyuan gives her aft(prenominal) a Chinese New Year crab dinner party. June reveals her bewilderment when she notices a bartender wearing a similar pendant. After asking him of its origin, he replies with, My mother gave it to me after I got divorced I depend shes trying to tell me Im still worth something. June reflects, I knew by the curiosi ty in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant (222). This dialogue suggests there is a deeper, sadder miscommunication between June and her deceased mother.As June ascertains the meaning of Suyuans poignant offering by asking her aunties, her mothers closest friends, she realizes they would tell me a meaning that is different from what my mother intended (222). Conversations with her aunties remind June of unspeakable distances My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each others meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more (Cheng 12). Her revelation is frightening, as she feels her mothers words will be lost in a sea of translations and interpretations. This realization, although exacerbating her quest to fall in her lifes importance, simultaneously opens her mind to the Chinese culture, thus slowly closing the cultural and generational gap felt between mother and daughter.Before reaching a blissfu l state of certainty, the pastime of a life-altering epiphany, June engaged in destructive fights with her mother, ending in her embarrassment and Suyuans loss of hope. In Two Kinds, the conflict between Suyuan and June culminates after Junes diffused fiasco when she decides she will no long- moveing play. After Suyuans insistent struggle to get June to play the soft, the ultimate communicational barrier is stressed. June shouts done belligerent sobs at her mother, You extremity me to be something that Im not Ill never be the kind of daughter you want me to be Suyuan shouts back in Chinese bellowing, Only 2 kinds of daughters conformable or follow own mind Only one kind of daughter can conk in this house. Obedient kind (Tan 153). These two kinds of daughters suggest Suyuans cultural expectations and customs whichcontributes to the cultural net her shouts in Chinese cause the communicational net, ending with the mother and daughter struggle. June responds with a devastating proclamation, deviation her mother, like her hopes, blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.As a result of Junes iron-will to assert her individuality, she fails her mother many times in the following years, including at a crab dinner twenty years later in Best Quality. At the beginning of the meal, everyone selects a crab until the last two are left for Suyuan and June. June, thinking it is the best and right thing to do, opts for the worst crab. However, Suyuan insists she take the better of the two crabs I knew I could not refuse thats the way Chinese mothers face they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of food, June recalls (232). This poignant moment is halted as the generational and cultural conflict between Suyuan and June intensifies during the crab dinner. During the meal, Waverly and June begin to bicker.However, Waverly gets the best of June, embarrassing her in front of her friends and family. Even worse, J une remembers her mother telling Waverly, True, cannot teach demeanor. June not sophisticate like you. Must be born this way. June laments not hardly is she humiliated, but betrayed by her mother (Tan 232). This bitter and oppressive remark strengthens the mother/daughter conflict. There are moments of redemption in both stories, however. In Two Kinds, Suyuan offers the piano June play when she was a child, while in Best Quality, she gives June a jade pendant with a poignant message about her lifes importance. After these offerings many years later, Suyuan and June finally come to an understanding.For Junes thirtieth birthday, Suyuan decides to give her the piano she played as a child in Two Kinds. After their climactic argument at the piano bench, Suyuan never mentions Junes piano lessons again. This lack of communication seals the distance between mother and daughter. Once Suyuan closed the lid to the piano, June reflects the lid not only shut out the dust and misery but her mo thers dreams as well. Many years later, the birthday offer surprises June, feeling the offer was a sign of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed (Tan 154). Suyuans generous gift opens anunderstanding between herself and her daughter. June takes this offer as a sign of not only forgiveness, but hope for a better relationship with her mother. Hope rekindles as June recalls, after that, every time I saw the piano in my advances living room it made me feel proud, as if it were a shiny trophy I had won (Tan 602).Similarly, Best Quality suggests reconciliation and an opening to Junes general sense of self. For example, upon giving June the jade pendant, Suyuan launches into a heartfelt message, For a long time, I wanted to give you this necklace. See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your lifes importance. In this instance, June begins to understand herself, even if she does not fully understand her mothers words. She implies her understanding by reflecting, Although I didnt want to accept it, I felt as if I already swallowed it (235). The mother/daughter relationship mends further when June asks her mother, what if soulfulness else had picked that crab?Her mother smiles and responds with Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everybody else want best quality. But you? You thinking different. Waverly took best quality crab, you took worst. Because you have best quality heart. You have style no one can teach, must be born this way (Tan 234). This powerful, poignant message from mother to daughter mends the generational and cultural gaps poisoning the relationship. Thus, in Two Kinds and Best Quality there is a heal process with understanding but not before a cultural conflict can plague the relationship. ultimately, the communicational and cultural barrier between mother and daughter almost breaks, broadening Junes understanding of her lifes importance and Suyuans hopes.The communicational barrier shatters completely when June reaches an epiphany in Two Kinds. As June begins to see Suyuan in a new light after the subtle offering of the piano as a sign of closure, she is revitalized and mature. After tuning the piano, June begins to play Perfectly Contented, the melody she butchered so many years ago during the talent show fiasco. She then notices Pleading Child next to it. As June recalls, Pleading Child was shorter but slower Perfectly Contented was longer but faster (Tan155). Finally realizing they are two halves of the same song, June becomes wiser. The two halves of the song serve as a metaphor about life to highlight the relationship between mother and daughter (Shen 244). The mother/daughter relationship involves two kinds of phases a phase of barriers and a phase of maturity, understanding and redemption, the key ingredients to destroying cultural and communicational obstacles. Junes epiphany shatters the communicational barrier, as she finally understands full-heartedly she is in another phase of her life, where the good intentions and hopes her mother have for her are real and true.A similar theme is portrayed in Best Quality, where Junes sense of self is truly realized. After her mother dies, she notices her father does not eat well. Without realizing it, she is already making the same dishes her mother used to make for her father. As she cooks the dish, she remembers her mother mentioning how hot things restore the spirit and health (Tan 235). June begins to realize her provision is not only restoring her fathers spirit and health, but the spirit and health of her Chinese personal identity. In essence, she is slowly becoming like her mother, the same woman she resisted for many years.This duality is further accentuated when she hears the tenants upstairs. Even you dont want them, you stuck, her mother says. June finally understands her mothers meaning (Tan 236). Again, not only can she finally understand her mother, she begins to become her mother, feeling the regret of having noisy tenants. Finally, she fully becomes aware of her Chinese identity when she mimics her mothers discontent for the tomcat on her windowsill Get away from there I shout, and sapidity my give on the window three times. But the cat just narrows his eyes, flattens his one ear, and hisses back at me (236). This illustrates Junes moment of awakening. She is truly like her mother as she remembers Suyuans complaints, the same three slaps of the hand and finally, the same hissing as a retort. June recognizes her mothers traits and how they shape her, thus completely bust the cummunicational and cultural barriers between them.As a result of communicational and cultural barriers, June and Suyuan endure a stressful relationship. Although the conflicts between June and Suyuan are bitter and cold, there is a moment of forgiveness and reconciliation. TwoKinds implies without a struggle for identity and understanding, one cannot live the two halves of human experience. Illuminated by her mothers words, June begins to understand her lifes importance and herself as a Chinese-American.Best Quality depicts that understanding and how parental focussing combined with cultural experience can create character and, above all else, identity. Life exists in antitheses and paradoxes. Joy and sorrow, love and hate, pleasure and pain, success and failure, guild and redemption are all inextricably intertwinced as part of the human experience, each making the alternative possible. Tans Two Kinds and Best Quality reveals the human experience through a mother and daughter conflict going through two kinds of phases, a communicational and cultural barrier creating the conflict and the best qualities of ones identity healing a broken relationship.