Discussion Topic
Jing-mei's mother's decision to leave her babies in China
Summary:
In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds," Jing-mei's mother was forced to leave her twin baby daughters in China during the Japanese invasion in World War II. She left them out of compassion, stricken with dysentery and unable to continue fleeing. She hoped someone would find and save them, leaving behind some jewelry, money, and a note. This loss deeply affected her, and although she focused on Jing-mei in America, she never stopped yearning to reconnect with her lost daughters.
Why did Jing-mei's mother leave her babies in "Two Kinds"?
In Amy Tan’s short story “Two Kinds,” Jing-mei alludes to her mother’s past life:
She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.
Before coming to America—and long before Jing-mei was born—her mother was forced to abandon twin daughters while fleeing Japanese attacks. In war-torn Chongqing, the weary woman can no longer carry her two infants and leaves them on the side of a road. This act is not out of cruelty, but out of compassion and hope. Stricken by dysentery, the mother knows that she can no longer run and escape; she does not want the babies to die with her. Therefore, she leaves them what little jewelry and money she has as well as a note to deliver them to Shanghai in case she were to...
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survive. She hopes that someone else will find and save the daughters.
Despite her illness and exhaustion, the mother does survive, recovers, meets Jing-mei’s father, and emigrates to the America. Sadly, she never knows what happens to her two daughters born in China. Heartbroken by this loss (as well as thinking that the twins never had a chance to reach their potential), she focuses all of her attention on Jing-mei, who is supposedly her only living daughter. When failing to live up to her mother’s hopes for her accomplishments, Jing-mei lashes out.
I remembered the babies she had lost in China, the ones we never talked about. "Then I wish I'd never been born!" I shouted. “I wish I were dead! Like them."
It was as if I had said magic words. Alakazam!—her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.
In “Two Kinds,” Jing-mei never seems to truly understand why her mother left the the two babies behind. This abandonment is an emotional scar that never heals for Jing-mei's mother.
Who did Jing-Mei's mother leave behind in China in "Two Kinds"?
This is only briefly mentioned in "Two Kinds" but is part of the larger story within The Joy Luck Club. Jing-Mei has grown up in America with her mother, who immigrated from China. In the beginning, we get a glimpse of those whom her mother left behind:
She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.
Most notably, Jing-Mei's mother has two other daughters whom she was forced to abandon as she fled China. Horrifically, she had to abandon these daughters on the side of a road during the invasion of Japan during World War II.
"Two Kinds" doesn't tell the story of these other daughters, Jing-Mei's half siblings (her mother remarried in America), but from reading The Joy Luck Club, we know that her mother hoped to find these other daughters before she died. She was never able to reconnect with them, and this sense of responsibility falls to Jing-Mei, who seeks to both find her half sisters and to share with them the stories of their mother. Ultimately, this becomes a message of reconciliation in the often broken relationships between mothers and daughters.