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...of Jing-mei, a Chinese-American girl challenged by her mother's imposed cultural expectations and her desire to be loved. Jing-mei's story of conflict, retold in her adulthood, relates the theme of conflicting values. While Jing-mei's mother believes that her daughter's life should be defined by obedience and success, Jing-mei only wants to be herself and be loved for the person she is. One of the most important lines in the story demonstrates this division expressed by Jing-mei's mother: "Only two kinds of daughtersThose who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!"(Tan, 1989).
The narrator of the story relates her life in terms of her mother's expectations and her failure to meet them. She tells of her mother's hope that she will become a prodigy and all the efforts that her mother goes through toward this end. As an obedient daughter, Jing-mei should be able to take her mother's direction, find a talent, and become a prodigy. It is her mother's assertion, then, that her willfulness is...