Could a mother plead her child enough to be molded into a genius while keeping her perfectly contented? Why does a daughter who thinks " 'no' is a word the world never learned to say to her" get her greater benefits than a daughter who obeys her mother instinctively? How can a mother's influence make or break a woman's strive to become all that she can be? The influence of the mothers onto their daughters in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" and Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" are expressed by the way their daughters develop in effect to their prior treatment. "Two Kinds", by Amy Tan, shows how a mother's influence on her daughter can create a woman in disguise of a failure. In "Everyday Use", Alice Walker shows how a mother's different behavior towards her daughters creates the women that they become.
             There are two kinds of daughters; the obedient kind and the ones who follow their own mind. Why can't there be more types of daughters; Ones that follow their mind while being obedient, ones that follow their heart while still being a genius in their mother's eyes? After all, don't most mothers think their children are the best, even though to the outsider they are no better than the next kid? It's not as if she was asking to quit life all together, she just wanted to be free. Was her mother so wrong in pushing her to become famous? Or was famous an excuse for just trying to push her daughter to her limits? Peter Pan might have been a loner, but he could fly. Why couldn't she see that she could also fly with any of the hobbies her mother proposed? Why did she insist on not trying to learn how to play the piano? Was it about the image? Was it about rebelling and not being all that she could be? Or was she just trying to piss her mother off?
             "Be all that you can be"; as well as the Army motto, this was also Jing-mei's ...