The Mother-Daughter Relationship is Insanely Complicated

The mother-daughter relationship is one of the more complicated human relationships. Often seeming contradictory and impossible to understand, this relationship can be difficult for both mothers and daughters to understand despite the fact that they are experiencing it. However, reading the short stories “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan and “How to Talk to Your Mother” by Lorrie Moore may help the reader to better navigate her own mother-daughter relationship. In the story “Two Kinds,” Jing-Mei (June) Woo has a very difficult relationship while growing up with her mother, Suyuan, and in “How to Talk to Your Mother” Virginia has a complex and imperfect relationship with her own mother. The reading of these two stories is beneficial for the reader because they will help her recognize truths about and to better experience her own mother-daughter relationship. 

Although the plot of “Two Kinds” focuses more on June’s childhood and the plot of “How to Talk to Your Mother” focuses on Virginia’s adult life, these two stories’ plots share similarities. Both June’s mother and Virginia’s mother gave birth to female babies who died before the birth of the main characters. The death of these young daughters deeply affected each mother. 

June’s mother, Suyuan, fled to the United States from China in 1949. When she left, “she had to leave her young twins for dead on a roadside, fleeing war-torn China (MagillOnLiterature Plus)”. This loss still affects Suyuan deeply. This is evident when June uses the twin daughters’ death as a weapon in an argument with Suyuan: