Character Analysis on Jing-Mei in “two Kinds”

“Two Kinds,” by Amy Tan is a story in which a Chinese mother believes that her daughter can do anything in the United States as long as she puts her mind to it and decides to push her daughter, Jing-Mei, into being a prodigy. Unfortuantely, Jing-Mei and her mother do not share the same views on things. Jing-Mei wants to establish her own identity apart from her mother and feels that she can be successful through her own efforts and determination. Jing-Mei’s desire to be an independent person leads to her stubbornness, hardness, and cruelty.

At the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei’s mother attempts to dominate and control her daughter’s life. Jing-Mei’s mother presents her with many tests from stories of amazing children. The test include: knowing the capitals of states, multiplying numbers in her head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on her head without using her hands, predicting the daily temperatures in cities, and looking at a page from the Bible for three minutes to see what she remembers. After many failed tests in knowledge and skills, Jing-Mei quickly begins to lost interest in her mother’s dream of being a prodigy and becomes stubborn. “I won’t let her change, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not” (213, paragraph 19). This clearly shows that Jing-Mei is trying to resist her mother’s domination and control. She wants to be herself and make her own choices. Just as Jing-Mei thinks her mother has given up, her mother persists and arranges for her to take piano lessons.

After three months pass, Jing-Mei’s mother sees a Chinese girl playing the piano on the Ed Sullivan Show and gets the same idea for Jing-Mei. Her mother arranges for her to take lessons with Mr. Chong and this begins to take over her daughter’s free time. When Jing-Mei learns that Mr. Chong is deaf, she is lazy and gets away with lots of mistakes. She also discovers ways to fool him and make it look