#6 Week 5 "Two Kinds" pg.193

Summary

A Chinese immigrant mother who has moved to the united states after losing everything including her husband and twin daughters, now has one child whom she puts all her attention on. She wants to make her child a famous prodigy, and quizzes her on random facts and tries to make her a Chinese version of Shirley temple.  After Tan (narrator and daughter) shows no interest in her mother’s trivial pursuits her mother decides to find her daughter a piano teacher after seeing a similar child play on a popular TV show. When Tan realizes her instructor is death and can’t see very well, she decides not to try as hard and that a few wrong notes aren’t worth stopping and correcting. After playing an embarrassingly awful song at a talent show Tan realizes she has not only let her mother down but lets her self-down as well. Although Tan feels like she has failed her mother, she shows no signs of trying to fix that, she refuses to play piano anymore and pushes her mother further and further away from her after rubbing her twin daughter’s deaths in her face. Years pass and Tan’s mother dies and leaves Tan the piano she had bought her years earlier, in the bench Tan finds two music scores “Perfectly Contented” and “Pleading Child”. This symbolizes her mother who was always content with what Tan did no matter what and Tan always pleading with her mother to stop pushing her, after playing them both Tan realizes the songs go together to make one big beautiful song.

Reader Response

I thought at the beginning of the story that it was going to be about a loving mother and daughter duo that rise to fame and have an everlasting love and respect for one another. But Tan’s hatred toward her mother is made very apparent throughout the story line. It is sad that Tan never realized that her mother just wanted her to succeed and always believed in her even when Tan didn’t believe in herself. I don’t understand where Tan found such hatred for her mother and never realized how much stuff her mother put up with from her. It is a sad story that makes me glad that I have a great relationship with my mother.