Memoir

All the stories in The Joy Luck Club are interlocking personal narratives in different voices. Because the narrators appear as characters in each other's stories, as well as tell their own stories, Tan does not have to fully develop the narrator's voice in each story. Nevertheless, the stories can stand alone, and "Two Kinds" was published separately; therefore it is possible to discuss the narrative technique utilized in the story.

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...