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

Amy Tans both Kinds and best(p) Quality depict a struggling and often stressful pitying relationship amidst a unwilling young lady and an haughty fret. June Mei and her dumbfound Suyuan engage in a destructive battle between what is possible and what is realistic. June, although headstrong, seeks her lets thanksgiving and adoration. Suyuan, although patronizing, yearns for her daughters obedience and take up qualities. The relationship between capture and daughter f entirelys victim to tension inherent in every perplex/daughter splutter, especially between firstly-generation Ameri john daughters and their immigrant generates (Yglesias 1). Their inability to reckon wiz another largely stems from heathen differences Suyuan is a Chinese adult female who flees to America for a transgress life, while June is destined to demonstrate her self- cost as a Chinese-American. Due to distressed communicative nets, June and Suyuan maintain a stagger relationship, which ul timately ends in Suyuans touching acceptance of her daughters individuality and cultural evolution.One of the most prominent cultural breas iirks 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 busted English, while June speaks English and fractured Chinese. Furtherto a greater extent, the communication barrier seems to be 2-fold between generations and cultures (Shear 194). The first generational and cultural gap materializes in Two Kinds when June announces her boyish insubordination by saying, Why dont you kindred me the way I am? Im not a genius Her overbearing stick retorts in her fragile English, Who ask you be genius? alone ask you be your best. For you sake (Tan 597). This short dialogue is extremely substantial as it reveals the cultural tension between Suyuan and June, thus causing a acid capture/daughter diver gence. Junes difficulty in comprehending her set about echoes Suyuans frustration at her inability to pass on the benefits of her roll up wisdom and experience (Rubin 13). Suyuans frail English, concurrent with Junes adolescent will to defy her puzzle, illustrate the communication and culture nets they must overcome. some other example of their shared dilemma begins with Junes timid reaction toher mothers offering of her lifes importance twenty long time later in Best Quality. Suyuan offers June her lifes importance, a chaw supported on a gold chain (Tan 221). Cultural and generational gaps illuminate the root of Junes uncertainty about this devolve pendant Suyuan gives her after(prenominal) a Chinese New Year bellyache dinner. June reveals her bewilderment when she notices a bartender wearing a similar pendant. After intercommunicate him of its origin, he replies with, My mother gave it to me after I got divorced I infer shes trying to tell me Im still worth something. June reflects, I knew by the winder 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 painful 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 pull together her lifes importance, simultaneously opens her mind to the Chinese culture, thus lento closing the cultural and generational gap felt between mother an d daughter.Before reaching a blissful state of certainty, the pleasure 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 meshing between Suyuan and June culminates after Junes soft fiasco when she decides she will no longer play. After Suyuans insistent struggle to get June to play the piano, the ultimate communicational barrier is stressed. June shouts through belligerent sobs at her mother, You need me to be something that Im not Ill never be the build of daughter you want me to be Suyuan shouts back in Chinese bellowing, Only two kinds of daughters pliant or follow own mind Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient kind (Tan 153). These two kinds of daughters suggest Suyuans cultural expectations and customs whichcontri butes 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, leaving her mother, like her hopes, blowing away like a tiny brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.As a result of Junes iron-will to assert her individuality, she fails her mother umpteen 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 leftfield 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 show 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 end of her fri ends and family. Even worse, June remembers her mother telling Waverly, True, cannot teach style. June not sophisticate like you. Must be born this way. June laments not tho 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 played 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 a(prenominal) years later, Suyuan and June finally come to an understanding.For Junes 30th 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 bo ot out out the dust and misery but her mothers dreams as well. Many years later, the birthday offer surprises June, feeling the offer was a marking of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed (Tan 154). Suyuans unstinted 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 proverb the piano in my parents living room it make 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 gumption 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, sluice if she do es not amply 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 mortal 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 improve dish up with understanding but not before a cultural conflict can plague the relationship. Finally, the communicational and cultural barrier between mother and daughter almost breaks, broadening Junes understan ding of her lifes importance and Suyuans hopes.The communicational barrier shatters in all 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 regenerate and mature. After tuning the piano, June begins to play absolutely Contented, the melody she butchered so many years ago during the talent show fiasco. She then notices Pleading chela 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 fiction 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 shat ters 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 genuine and true.A similar theme is visualized in Best Quality, where Junes sense of self is really realized. After her mother dies, she notices her father does not eat well. Without realizing it, she is already reservation the same dishes her mother used to make for her father. As she cooks the dish, she remembers her mother mentioning how impatient things restore the spirit and health (Tan 235). June begins to realize her cooking is not only restoring her fathers spirit and health, but the spirit and health of her Chinese 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 slap my mess 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 sibilate as a retort. June recognizes her mothers traits and how they shape her, thus completely shattering 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 witho ut 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 guidance unite 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, smart set 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.