Coming of Age: Hard Lessons Learned in the Short Stories of Walker, Tan, And Bambara

Coming of age themes are present in many short stories. The short stories "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan and like "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara, are dependent upon a comparison between the values of old and young. All show the foolishness of parents and children in different ways and quite often the character who thinks he or she is the wisest is in fact shown to be the most ignorant. As young people struggle for self-definition they can frequently be callous and blind to the wisdom of their elders but older people can also be blind to the wisdom of the young.

This is illustrated most starkly in "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, where the protagonist's eldest daughter Dee believes herself to have become highly educated and aware at...
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