The Analysis of Amy Tan

出生在加利福尼亚州奥克兰的Emily Tan，是一位美国作家，她的作品主要集中在母亲和女儿之间的关系上，并有许多作品是畅销书,其中一些还被拍成电影。出版于1989年的《喜福会》就是一个例子。Emily Tan是在一个中国移民家庭长大的，她的父亲是一个电气工程师，母亲做一些零工。让我们通过本文看看Emily Tan的生活与创作生涯。

Born in Oakland, California, Emily Tan is an accomplished American writer whose works mainly focus on the relationships between mother and daughter. Particularly, she also touches upon the Chinese- American experiences. Many of her works turn out to be bestsellers, some of which have been adopted into films.  The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989, was an instant smash, which helped her to gain a great reputation. Emily Tan was raised in a Chinese immigrants family, with her father being an electrical engineer and her mother doing some odd jobs. Emily’s childhood was not happy at all, for at the age of 15 she lost both her older brother and father who suffered from brain tumors. Before embarking on writing, she worked a wide variety of odd jobs.

There is no doubt that Two Kinds is a vivid description and real representation of the experiences of the Chinese-American family.  The mother is a typical Chinese parent who adopts a traditional way of child-rearing and is dying to make her child to be a so-called prodigy. Whereas the daughter is a bit disobedient, not willing to follow her mother’s pre-planned career path. The whole passage is teemed with this kind of struggle against her mother’s expectation for her. On the balance, Two Kinds is a representative work of Emily Tan who is adept in capturing the smallest details of the mother-daughter relationship.

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of Two Kinds, it is of great necessity to mention the Chinese child- rearing style. Among the Chinese community, it is generally commonplace that the parents as well as the extended family members have high expectations on their children and they aspire to foster their children to be a successful individual as early as from their childhood. As a consequence, children raised in this family tend to encounter great pressure and are likely to break the rules set by their parents.

Emily’s mother is a typical Chinese parent, authoritarian, controlling and demanding. She always expects her daughter to do exactly what she is told. In her eyes, her daughter can definitely be a prodigy, just like Shirley Temple, a well-known American actress. It is clear that she really has a high expectation for her daughter, sending Emily to beauty training school, telling her the marvelous story about the three-year-old prodigy who can memorize all the capital cities all over the world and doing endless tests on a consistent basis. What she really wants is to make her daughter a so-called genius, which will definitely satisfy her own sense of pride. It turns out, nevertheless, Emily always let her down.

On the other hand, Emily seems to be unwilling to follow the pre-set plans for her life path. To a larger extent, she hates the raised expectation, the feeling of letting her parents down. She even loathes the various kinds of tests and practices; rather, she just wants to be herself. She is tired of being the obedient daughter who is able to make their parents feel proud.

Overall, two kinds reveals the widespread cultural phenomenon existing in the Chinese community. Personally, I think the authoritarian parenting style will have a detrimental effect on the children’s development, ‘simply because that child-rearing style will doubtless stifle their ‘creativity and even damage their self-esteem. Most importantly, parents are expected to help their children to achieve their potential and respect their individuality.