There is a generation gap in both the stories “Everyday Use” and “Two Kinds”. There are a lot of similarities and differences in both of the stories. In both stories, Dee and Mei-Jin argued with their mothers about different the things that they wanted. Dee wanted the quilts left down from generations while Mei-Jin wanted her mom to stop pushing her to become a prodigy like Shirley Temples. Both generations wanted what’s best for their daughters but the modern generation didn’t know just how to accept it. In both of the stories, the daughters both wanted something from their mothers. Their mothers wanted what they thought was best for their daughters by using their own methods. Generation gap was a big part in these two stories. It caused miscommunications between mother and daughters. They ended up mistaking what their mother’s meant in a different way. In “Everyday Use”, Dee changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo and has a new appearance. She changes her name to protest what she thought was a history of oppression in her family. Mama and Dee have different views on what their heritage is. Mama treats her family heirlooms as origins of where and who they came from. Dee on the other hand knows very little about their heritage. She pretends to be a know it all of their heritage and accuses Mama of not understanding it. Her values of the family quilt are not the same as Mama and Maggie’s. Dee would just use the quilts as a display instead of putting it to their full use. The quilt is meant to be used as a symbol of the strong bond of women from different generations. Dee does not understand her heritage and where she came from. In “Two Kinds”, Suyuan wanted to push Mei-Jin’s prodigy side out by letting her try many different things to see what she is good at. She wanted Mei-Jin to be another Shirley Temples. After she saw a 9 year old Chinese girl playing the Piano on The Ed Sullivan Show, she pushed Mei-Jin into playing the piano. Suyuan’s constant nagging backfires on her when Mei-Jin plays badly in the talent contest. Mei-Jin knew she is not a prodigy at piano so she didn’t even bother to try when it got harder. She found a loophole when playing the piano in front of her teacher because he was deaf. If Mei-Jin tried, she could’ve been very good at the piano. Mei-Jin failed to live up to her mother expectations. Suyuan didn’t push Mei-Jin just to brag about her at Church, she did it because she loved Mei-Jin. She only knew of this after her mother death. She tried playing the piano pieces “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented” and realizes that they are both halves of the same song. Generation gaps can often cause a problem in families. It can result in mothers and daughters arguing just like in the stories “Everyday Use” and “Two Kinds”. Their mothers wanted what was best for their daughters. The daughters simply just couldn’t understand that and mistook it in another direction causing conflicts. Generation gaps cause miscommunication between different the generations.