Two Kinds and Everyday Use - Essay Example

TWO DIFFERENT CULTURES (Two Kinds and Everyday Use) ID number: of Human Resources of University (affiliation)Location of University:Date of Submission: February 04, 2014Estimated Word Count = 681 (text only)Two Kinds (Cultural Differences)The short story by Amy Tan entitled “Two Kinds” perfectly illustrates the wide gap or the cultural differences between an immigrant mother and her native-born daughter in America. In this story, the mother is always haunted by her sad and tragic experience in China in which she lost everything she had – her home, her parents, her husband, and two twin daughters.

It was such a bad experience she was fiercely determined to not suffer again the same fate by striving so hard in America and this intense struggle she transferred to her own daughter, who had been in many ways already much Americanized in terms of her own values and attitudes. The mother sees being in America a tremendous opportunity to succeed in life, as when she said, “of course, you can be a prodigy too.” This is synonymous with her dreams of making it big in America and be a success in life through her own daughter.

In fact, she believed anyone can be anything what one wanted in America (open a nice restaurant and be an entrepreneur or be self-employed, work in government and get a good salary and a good retirement package too, buy a house with little or no down payment at all, to get rich, or to become famous).In other words, the conflict between the mother and daughter in this story is that of the clash of cultural norms, attitudes, and values in which the mother saw the need to work hard to be successful while the daughter sees it differently.

Her daughter wanted to be left alone, so to speak, to pursue her own desires and dreams, to be not dictated by anybody, not even her mother. Their personal conflict is intensified due to this cultural difference, in which the two of them are working on different paradigms (or mindset). In other words, the title “Two Kinds” could mean an entirely different thing, that of two worlds, China and the United States (Bloom, 2009, p. 2). Everyday Use (Maggie and Dee)In the case of Maggie, people would naturally be sympathetic to her because of what had happened to her.

She got burn scars when their house burned down, which some readers had suspected to be set by Dee because she intensely disliked their old and run-down house of which she is ashamed to even invite her own friends over to their old house. Besides, the character of Maggie is that of a shy girl, introverted and demure to the extent she did not bother to attend the school in their area to get a proper education. In a sense, she is the epitome of what a good kind of daughter that every mother wants a daughter to be, one who is obedient and submissive.

The character of Dee is that of a person who is headstrong and determined to get her own way no matter what the risks and the consequences. Such kind of behavior would naturally cause fear in any parent because it indicated someone who is rebellious that clearly spells trouble for the mother. She is also portrayed as materialistic, egoistic, and self-centered to a fault as it seems she cares only for herself and her own opinions and stands by her ideas. There is hardly a thing that could change her mind whenever she is decided to do or wants something.

Dee, despite her obvious faults, also has her own redeeming qualities. She is also a very nuanced person as she had understood the whole significance of the quilt to her family and race. The quilt symbolized a cultural heritage and tradition which she is extremely proud of but more than this, the quilt was the new symbol of black power under the Civil Rights Movement. The character of Dee showed a better understanding of the quilts political symbolism of a new-found power among the black Americans who suffered from slavery and now discrimination.

There is a sense of urgency in her attitude to life, lacking in her mother and sister (Lewis, 2002, p. 4). ReferencesLewis, N. (2002). The concept of heritage in Alice Walkers Everybody Use. Berlin, Germany: GRIN Verlag.Tan, A. (2009). Two Kinds. H. Bloom (Ed.). New York, NY: Infobase Publishing.