😊 Here below listed are the important aspects about Unit Two.

I.Theme

“Two Kinds” is taken from The Joy Club, which explores conflicts between two generations and two different cultures. Set in China and in the United States, the novel is woven by stories of four Chinese mothers and their four daughters. Mothers always place high hopes on their daughters, the young generation think of themselves as Americans and resist their mothers’ attempts to change them into obedient Chinese daughters. Only after they have grown up and become more mature do they realize that the legacy left by their mothers is an important part of their lives, too.

II. Writing Style

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club has autobiographical elements in it, and for such a novel the first-person narrative is more effective than the third-person narrative. As the first-person narrator is part of the story* she/he can move freely within the fictional world and approach other fictional characters. The first-person addresses the reader directly. The immediate and compelling quality of the first-person narration enables the author to capture the moment as if it were taking place very instant and right here.

The first-person is either a participant or an eyewitness of the events. So there is authority in the first-person narration. The first person narration can also allow the reader to enter the mind of the narrator. The narrator tells us what happens in the physical world as well as in his/her mental world. When we read the story, we not only follow the events, the external occurrences, but we are also able to perceive what is going on in the mind of the narrator the internal of the girl as a character. The first-person narration has its restrictions. It is tightly controlled and limited in its access to information.

III. Implications

Many of the stories in the book are based on Amy Tan’s personal experiences. As a teenager, she tried painfully to make sense of the tension between her and her mother. Out of a strong desire to come to terms with this stormy relationship and to communicate with her mother, she began to write, not for a public audience, but for herself and mother. Amy Tan tells an honest, moving, and beautifully courageous story of the mother-daughter bond. Reading this story also arouses our thought of the relationship between our parents.