Indirect characterization is characterization that requires a reader to infer traits of a character based on how that character acts, thinks, and talks to other characters, and how other characters respond to the character in question.
This question specifically asks about traits that propel the mother/daughter conflict forward, so it is probably best to begin looking at the text around the point when Jing-mei decides that she will no longer respond positively to her mother's attempts to make Jing-mei into a prodigy.
I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.
This quote doesn't explicitly tell readers that Jing-mei is rebellious and willful, but it indirectly points readers toward that analysis. We see Jing-mei deciding that she is going to go her own way, regardless of what her mother thinks. As the conflict between mother and daughter continues, Jing-mei digs in harder and deeper, and this shows that she is also stubborn, resilient, and able to persevere through adversity. You could probably make the case that Jing-mei is also selfish. All of those traits propel the conflict to its climax, where Jing-mei screams out that she doesn't want to be her mother's daughter anymore:
"Then I wish I weren't your daughter, I wish you weren't my mother," I shouted.
When an author uses direct characterization, they explicitly tell the reader what qualities or traits a character has. When an author uses indirect characterization, they tell us how the character behaves, speaks, or thinks so that we can infer their qualities for ourselves.
The narrator, Jing-mei, never tells us that her mother was a believer in the American dream, but she does say that Suyuan believed that a person could be anything they wanted to be in America. Suyuan, through her daughter's descriptions, is characterized as a woman who wholeheartedly believes that, with hard work, a person can do anything in America, and her daughter is no exception to this rule. Suyuan has complete faith in her daughter's ability to be the best...at something. At first, Jing-mei is "just as excited" as her mother, but her self-esteem begins to deteriorate as she fails more and more of her mother's tests of her aptitude. She says that seeing her mother's "disappointed face" over and over forces "something inside [her]...to die." Suyuan continues to pressure Jing-mei, forcing her to take up the piano, but, by now, Jing-mei is becoming defiant. She says that she is determined "not to be anybody different" from who she feels she is. After her disastrous talent show debut, Suyuan's face tells her daughter that "she had lost everything," and Jing-mei "felt the same way." The more Suyuan pushes—out of love, though it doesn't feel that way—the more Jing-mei resists, and their conflict escalates quickly.
Indirect characterization is accomplished by describing what the character says and does.
Jing-mei and her mother are in a conflict because the mother wants Jing-mei to become a prodigy. She eventually decides that she wants Jing-mei to be a pianist, and so she dictates a schedule of lessons and practice. When Jing-mei rebels and asks, "Why don't you like me the way I am? . . . I can't play the piano," Jing-mei's mother slaps her and calls her ungrateful.
Jing-mei subverts her mother's will by not trying very hard in her lessons and taking advantage of the fact that her teacher is too deaf to hear missed notes. She plays in rhythm because that's all he can hear, but she doesn't practice the notes.
Ultimately, Jing-mei tells her mother, "I'm not going to play anymore." When her mother attempts to force her by pulling her to the piano and lifting her onto the bench, they have an argument that ends after Jing-mei tells her that she wishes she (Jing-mei) were dead, like the children her mother left behind in China. This ugly outburst ends the argument, and the subject of piano lessons is tabled.
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