1、Two KindsBy Amy Tan(谭恩美谭恩美)From The Joy Luck ClubThe author About the author Tragedy struck the Tan family when Amys father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within a year of each other.Mrs.Tan moved her surviving children to Switzerland,where Amy finished high school,but by this time mot
2、her and daughter were in constant conflict.About the author Mother and daughter did not speak for six months after Amy Tan left the Baptist college her mother had selected for her and follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College.Tan further defied her mother by abandoning the pre-med course to purs
3、ue the study of English and linguistics.About the author She received her bachelors and masters degrees in these fields at San Jose State University.In 1974,she and her boyfriend,Louis DeMattei were married.They were later to settle in San Francisco DeMattei,an attorney,took up the practice of tax l
4、aw,while Tan studied for a doctorate in linguistics,first at the University of California at Santa Cruz,later at Berkeley.About the author By this time,she had developed an interest in the problems of the developmentally disabled.She left the doctoral program in 1976 and took a job as a language dev
5、elopment consultant to the Alameda County Association for Retarded Citizens and later directed a training project for developmentally disabled childrenAbout the author With a partner,she started a business writing firm,providing speeches for salesmen and executives for large corporations.After a dis
6、pute with her partner,who believed she should give up writing to concentrate on the management side of the business,she became a full-time freelance writer.About the author Among her business works,written under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms,were a 26-chapter booklet called“Telecommunications and
7、You”,produced for IBM.Amy Tan prospered as a business writer.After a few years in business for herself,she had saved enough money to buy a house for her mother.About the author She and her husband lived well on their double income,but the harder Tan worked at her business,the more dissatisfied she b
8、ecame.The work had become a compulsive habit and she sought relief in creative efforts.She studied jazz piano,hoping to channel the musical training forced on her by her parents in childhood into a more personal expression.She also began to write fiction.About the author Her first story Endgame,won
9、her admission to the Squaw Valley writers workshop taught by novelist Oakley Hall.The story appeared in FM,literary magazine,and was reprinted in Seventeen.A literary agent,Sandra Dijkstra,was impressed enough with Tans second story Waiting Between the Trees,to take her on as a client.Dijlstra encou
10、raged Tan to complete an entire volume of stories.About the author Just as she was embarking on this new career,Tans mother fell ill.Amy Tan promised herself that if her mother recovered,she would take her to China,to see the daughter who had been left behind almost forty years before.Mrs.Tan regain
11、ed her health and mother and daughter departed for China in 1987.The trip was a revelation for Tan.It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with her mother,and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her agent.About the author On the basis of the comple
12、ted chapters and a synopsis(概要）概要）of the others,Dijkstra found a publisher for the book,now called The Joy Luck Club.With a$50,000 advance from G.P.Putnams Sons,Tan quit business writing and finished her book in a little more than four months.Upon its publication in 1989,Tans book won enthusiastic r
13、eviews and spent eight months on the New York Times best-seller list.Paperback right sold for$1.23 million.The book has been translated in 17 languages,including Chinese.About the author Her subsequent novel,The Kitchen Gods Wife(1991)confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales.Since then A
14、my Tan has published two books for children,The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat and two novels.The Hundred Secret Senses(1995)and The Bonesetters Daughter(2001).The Opposite of Fate:A Book of Musings,appeared in 2003.Her most recent book,Saving Fish From Drowning explores the tribulations（艰难）（
15、艰难）experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma.About the Novel The Joy Luck Club Amy Tans first and most successful novel.The book comprises a series of short-story-like vignettes(a short effective written description(a short effective written
16、description of character or scene)of character or scene)that move back and forth in time and space,between the lives of four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and their American-born daughters in California.It tells stories about four pairs of mothers and daughters-Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei(June);Anmei
17、Hsu and Rose;Lindo Jong and Waverly;Ying-ying St.Clair and Lena.About the Novel The Joy Luck Club These stories are told by seven voices,those of the mothers and daughters except for Suyuan Woo,who is dead when the story begins in the book.The different points of view enable us to look at the bitter
18、sweet mother-daughter relations from different angles.The mother and daughter treat one another cautiously,playing a game of love and fear,need and rejection.The older women,who suffered in Old China and emigrated to the United States with new hopes,are ambitious for their daughters,but while they e
19、xpect them to succeed in America,they want them to remain Chinese.The daughters consider themselves American and regard their mothers a source of embarrassment,for they speak fractured English,behave with Chinese manners,and wear funny-looking dresses with high,stiff collars and slits up the sides.T
20、hey want to be different from their mothers,and break loose from their mothers cultural gravity.They yearn to leave tradition behind.About the Novel The Joy Luck ClubThe mother-daughter relationships are a mixture of love and hostility,expectations and disappointments,conflicts and reconciliation.Wh
21、en the daughters become older and more mature,they begin to reconsider their identity and reevaluate their cultural heritage.They discover that their mothers are“in their bones”,and that heritage is not something they can ignore and shake off easily.After Suyuan Woos death,her daughter Jing-mei(June
22、),is invited to sit in her mothers seat at the mah-jongg table.At first she feels uncomfortably out of place in this world from which she has struggled to distance herself.As the aunts talk over the mah-jongg game about themselves and their daughters,she begins to see her mothers generation in a dif
23、ferent light.Finally the aunts inform Jing-mei that the two Half sisters her mother had been forced to abandon during the war are still alive and are living in Shanghai.In the last section of the book Jing-mei tells about he trip to China to be united with the two sisters.“The minute our train leave
24、s the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen,China,I feel different.I can feel the skin On my forehead tingling,my blood rushing through a new course,my bones aching with a familiar old pain.And I think,my mother was right.I am becoming Chinese.”Plot “Two Kinds”is a fiction.Although this passage is ta
25、ken from a novel,it can be read as a complete short story.Because it has a complete plot of its own.As we read“Two Kinds”we will find that this story is carefully constructed,containing all the five stages of the plot.Epiphany Often it tells of an epiphany(a sudden clear understanding of sth):some moment of insight,discovery,or revelation(the making known of the truth 启示）启示）by which a characters life,or view of life,is greatly altered.As we read the text we should try to see if there is a moment in the story that tells of an epiphany.
