Jing-Mei Woo: Two Kinds; The Joy Luck Club- Amy Tan; inference

  In this new chapter Tan uses Jing-Mei as the narrator again.  Jing-Mei and her mother are an exception to the alternating mother-daughter narrator pattern.  Since Jing-Mei's mother is deceased, Jing-Mei will be the only narrator of both of their stories.  Although Tan does follow the normal order of the section in this chapter; Jing-Mei does tell a story about her life and not her mothers.  Jing-Mei tells a story about how her mother tried to make her a child prodigy.  Her mother, Suyuan, wanted to brag to her friend about her daughter, just as Lindo bragged about her daughter Waverly.  The final option for Jing-Mei was piano lessons.  Jing-Mei reluctantly started piano and soon inferred that her piano instructor, Mr. Chong, was deaf and his eyes were too weak to see all the wrong notes played.  Jing-Mei then tells the reader, after hitting many wrong notes, "So that's how i discovered that Old Chong's eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing."  Jing-Mei then embarrassed herself and her mother at the talent show when she hit many wrong notes.  Jing-Mei succeeded in spiting her mother and after the next week's argument she was not forced to play piano anymore.  She finally appreciated the piano and lessons when she was thirty.

     This is not unlike the first chapter when Jing-Mei talked about her and Suyuan not understanding each other.  Jing-Mei thought her mother wanted her to be perfect while her mother's intentions were for her to do her best, they both may have become a little side-tracked from their original plans.  The song by Miley Cyrus "Nobody's Perfect" came to mind as I read this chapter.  The Cyrus song talks about the reality that no one is perfect but we should all keep trying.  Jing-Mei and her mother did not have a perfect relationship but if Suyaun had still been alive they should have continued to keep improving their relationship.

Check out the song here: