Chinese Immigration to America

San Francisco has long been home to one of the largest Chinese-American communities in the United States. When immigrant groups settle in a specific area and establish extensive social and economic networks, these regions are known as enclaves. By the time the mothers in The Joy Luck Club (and Tan's own parents) arrived in California, there was already a significant and active Chinese-American enclave.

The first significant wave of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which aimed to limit Chinese immigration and prevent current residents from obtaining citizenship, as many as 30,000 Chinese immigrants arrived annually from mainland China.

These immigrants were predominantly male and, according to social historian Thomas Sowell, "only the hardest, dirtiest, most menial jobs were open to them." They were instrumental in constructing much of the railroad across the Sierra Nevada and took on perilous roles as strike-breakers in the mines. Despite these challenges, they maintained strong social connections and established economic structures like mutual aid societies and credit unions.

With the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, more women immigrated from China, improving the gender imbalance and the reputation of Chinatowns. The Chinese-American population began to grow, surpassing its previous peak from 1890 by 1950. Children of these immigrants, such as Jing-mei in "Two Kinds," were often expected to climb the American social and economic ladder significantly.

Although they avoided the anti-Chinese laws and overt prejudice faced by earlier generations, they still confronted numerous challenges associated with biculturalism, including "cultural dislocation; the problems and challenges of integrating two cultures; intergenerational struggles within immigrant families; the conflict between acculturation and adherence to an ancestral tradition, and between assimilation and parochialism," as noted by Huntley.

Asian American Literature

The conflicts and tensions related to biculturalism are a common theme in Asian-American literature. Tan's unique contribution to this body of work is her articulation of the Chinese-American woman's voice. Critics and social historians have observed that Chinese women are often acculturated to silence and are unlikely to publicly share their private experiences.

According to Huntley, Chinese-American women writers "have been largely but inadvertently responsible for the new and sudden popularity of Asian-American writing, a development made even more surprising because Chinese women were an almost invisible minority in American society until the early 1950s."

Following the example of Maxine Hong Kingston, Tan employed literary and narrative techniques such as the use of the talk story, which allowed the personal experiences of the older generation of women to be expressed in mythic and symbolic terms. Another significant contribution by Tan to the genre is her use of multiple narrators within a single text, a technique that Hong Kingston had introduced to American readers in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.

Although she identifies with other Asian-American authors and their themes, Tan hesitates to be labeled as a writer of ethnic American literature. In an interview with the online magazine Salon, Tan clarified her viewpoint. "Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they're writing a very specific story.”

Despite this, the commercial and critical acclaim of Tan's work is often credited with igniting renewed interest among publishers and readers in Asian-American literature.

Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" is the concluding story in the second section of her highly acclaimed debut book, The Joy Luck Club. Although Tan envisioned the book as a loosely connected collection of stories, it is frequently categorized as a novel. Several of these stories were individually published in various periodicals, with many appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, which secured the serial rights before the book's release. "Two Kinds" was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1989, just one month prior to the book's publication.

As with all the stories in the collection, "Two Kinds" delves into the intricate relationships between mothers and daughters. Specifically, Tan addresses the gap between mothers who were born in pre-communist China and have since been estranged from their native culture, and their American-born daughters who must balance their Chinese heritage with American societal expectations. The narrative unfolds in San Francisco, a bustling hub of Chinese American culture where extensive social and economic networks have been established over time by the Chinese American community.

The initial wave of Chinese immigration to the United States occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Before the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which aimed to restrict Chinese immigration and prevent those already in the country from obtaining citizenship, as many as 30,000 Chinese immigrants arrived annually from mainland China. These immigrants were predominantly male and, according to social historian Thomas Sowell, "only the hardest, dirtiest, most menial jobs were open to them." They labored on the railroads traversing the Sierra mountains and undertook the perilous work of strikebreakers in the mines. Despite these challenges, they maintained robust social networks and established economic institutions such as mutual aid societies and credit unions.

When the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, an influx of women from China began to arrive, improving the gender imbalance and the seedy reputation of Chinatowns in major cities. The Chinese American population started to grow, and by 1950, it surpassed its previous peak in 1890. The children of these immigrants, like Jing-mei in "Two Kinds," were often expected to achieve significant upward mobility in American society.

Although these newer immigrants avoided the overtly anti-Chinese laws and blatant prejudice faced by earlier generations, they still confronted numerous challenges associated with biculturalism. According to E. D. Huntley, these challenges included "cultural dislocation; the problems and challenges of integrating two cultures; intergenerational struggles within immigrant families; the conflict between acculturation and adherence to an ancestral tradition, and between assimilation and parochialism."

The conflicts and tensions surrounding biculturalism frequently appear in Asian American literature. Tan's distinct contribution to this genre is her articulation of the Chinese American woman's perspective. Critics and social historians have observed that Chinese women are often conditioned to remain silent and are unlikely to publicly share their private experiences. According to Huntley, Chinese American women writers "have been largely but inadvertently responsible for the new and sudden popularity of Asian American writing, a development made even more startling because Chinese women were an almost invisible minority in American society until the early 1950s."

Inspired by Maxine Hong Kingston, Tan developed literary and narrative techniques such as the "talk story," which allowed the personal experiences of the older generation of women to be expressed in mythic and symbolic terms. Another significant contribution Tan made to the genre is her use of multiple narrators within a single text, a technique previously introduced to American readers by Kingston in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.

Although Tan identifies with other Asian American writers and their subject matter, she hesitates to be labeled as an ethnic American literature writer. In an interview with the online magazine Salon, Tan clarified her stance: "Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group; they're writing a very specific story." Nonetheless, the commercial and critical success of Tan's work is often credited with sparking renewed interest among publishers and readers in Asian American literature.

In this story, the narrator, Jing-mei, resists her domineering mother's attempt to turn her into a musical prodigy to compete with a friend's daughter. The narrator reflects on these events after more than twenty years and continues to grapple with understanding her mother's motivations.

"Two Kinds" includes all the elements that garnered Tan well-deserved acclaim for her first book. It showcases her keen ear for the broken English of the older generation (Tan was trained as a linguist, after all) and her sharp eye for detail in depicting the domestic life of mothers and daughters, especially through her vivid descriptions of food and clothing.