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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Jing-Mei’s mother respond when Jing-Mei throws a fit when she’s told she’ll be taking piano lessons?
(a) She slaps her
(b) She calls her father
(c) She laughs at her
(d) She weeps

2. How does Jing-Mei say her academic career ended in “Two Kinds”?
(a) She earned a bachelor’s degree
(b) She dropped out of college
(c) She earned a master’s degree
(d) She earned a law degree

3. Where does Jing-Mei find her exercise notes and secondhand music books at the end of the story?
(a) In a notebook in the basement
(b) In a box in the attic
(c) Under her mother’s bed
(d) In the piano bench

4. Of her lack of ambitions in music, Jing-Mei says “I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant” what?
(a) Hymns
(b) Sonatas
(c) Soliloquies
(d) Waltzes

5. The majority of the narrative of “Two Kinds” is related from what perspective?
(a) Third-person
(b) Fourth-person
(c) Second-person
(d) First-person

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Jing-Mei’s mother die from?

2. Where does Jing-Mei describe the piano as standing in her parents’ living room at the end of the story?

3. What does Jing-Mei say she never really did while she practiced for her talent show?

4. At the end of the story, Jing-Mei says, “After I had the piano tuned, I opened the lid and touched the keys.” How does she say it sounded?

5. Jing-Mei describes the sound of the “bellows of the foghorns out on the bay” as sounding like what?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Jing-Mei’s mother look after her performance at the talent show? What does Jing-Mei think as she watches the following performances?

2. What “transformation” does Jing-Mei undergo while looking into the mirror as a child?

3. Describe the narrative style of the story. Who is the narrator and how is her perspective defined?

4. What does Jing-Mei overhear her mother and Auntie Lindo talking about after she’s studied piano for a year?

5. In what ways can the reader see early in the story that Jing-Mei’s ambitions (and her mother’s) are misplaced?

6. How does Jing-Mei describe the process of playing scales for Mr. Chong?

7. How does the concept of identity relate centrally to the conflicts in “Two Kinds”?

8. What does Jing-Mei discover about playing the piano as she begins her studies with Mr. Chong?

9. What child star does Suyuan Woo attempt to mold her daughter into? What happens with this attempt?

10. How are the pressures of immigrant families depicted through the character of Suyuan Woo in “Two Kinds”?

(see the answer keys)

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