What is the author's style in Two Kinds by Amy Tan?

In "Two Kinds" the perspective moves back and forth between the adult and the child. In this way, Tan tells the story through the child's innocent view and the adult's experienced eyes. This allows readers to make judgments of their own, to add their own interpretations of the mother-daughter struggle.

This literary device also invites readers to think about the way memory itself functions, how we use events in the past to help make sense of our present. Literary critic Ben Xu explains that "it is not just that we have 'images,' 'pictures,' and 'views' of ourselves in memory, but that we also have 'stories' and narratives to tell about the past which both shape and convey our sense of self. Our sense of what has happened to us is entailed not in actual happening but in meaningful happenings, and the meanings of our past experience . . . are constructs produced in much the same way that narrative is produced."

In other words memory is a two-way street; it shapes the story as much as the story makes the memory. In Xu's words, "memory is not just a narrative, even though it does have to take a narrative form; it is more importantly an experiential relation between the past and the present, projecting a future as well."