In Margaret Laurence’s“The Loons,” the cross-cultural tensions exist between the two young girls, Vanessa McLeod and Piquette Tonnerre. Vanessa is white, as are all members of her family. The McLeods own a rural lake-side cabin, where they spend their summers. Vanessa’s father, a physician, has been treating Piquette for tuberculosis and invites her to the cabin for benefit of her health. Piquette is half-white, half-Native American. Vanessa has a stereotypical view of Native peoples and expects Piquette to enjoy nature, but she prefers sitting inside, and the girls rarely interact.

In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” tensions arise between two generations in the same family. Jing-Mei, or June, is American-born girl of Chinese heritage, while her mother was born and raised in China and immigrated to the United States as an adult. The tensions arise when June fails to become a piano-playing prodigy as her mother had hoped. June tries to be an obedient, silent girl as her mother prefers but ends up behaving independently and, in her mother’s eyes, disrespectfully.