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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. Of what ethnicity is the little girl on The Ed Sullivan Show that Jing-Mei and her mother watch playing piano?
(a) African
(b) Japanese
(c) Chinese
(d) Eastern European

2. Jing-Mei says in the end of the story that she had never asked her mother about her hope, “And that even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most”. What is the question that so frightened Jing-Mei?
(a) Why she had believed in me
(b) Why she had left her children behind
(c) Why she wanted to hurt me
(d) Why she had given up hope

3. What does Jing-Mei say she put her mother’s jewelry in after her death at the end of the story?
(a) Special silk pouches
(b) A post office box
(c) A box made of tin
(d) A bank vault

4. What color does Jing-Mei say her mother knitted sweaters in, which were also “all the colors I hated”?
(a) Yellow, pink, and orange
(b) Blue, red, and silver
(c) Red, white, and black
(d) Green, blue, and yellow

5. Jing-Mei says in the end of the story of her mother that she had “never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that” what “was inevitable”?
(a) Revenge
(b) Sadness
(c) Failure
(d) Despair

Short Answer Questions

1. How long ago does Jing-Mei say she sent a tuner to her parents’ apartment to recondition the piano at the end of the story?

2. Jing-Mei says to her mother as they argue over piano practice after the talent show, “I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!” Her mother responds, “Only two kinds of daughters.” What are these two kinds?

3. What is the name of the song that Jing-Mei finds next to the Schumann piece she played for the talent show at the end of the story?

4. After Jing-Mei’s performance at the talent show, she says, “We could have escaped during intermission.” What does she say “must have anchored my parents to their chairs”?

5. How does Jing-Mei describe her mother’s first children in the beginning of the story?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Jing-Mei describe her performance at the talent show?

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

3. How does Jing-Mei describe her mother’s immigration to America in the opening of the story? What did she leave behind?

4. How do Jing-Mei’s feelings about her mother’s ambitions begin to change early in the story? What causes her feelings to change?

5. How does Jing-Mei say her perceptions differed from her mother’s in regard to ambition as she looks back at the end of the story?

6. What cultural similarities can be seen between the author’s childhood and that of Jing-Mei in “Two Kinds”?

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

8. How does the conflict that marks the climax of the story begin? How much time has passed since Jing-Mei’s performance at the talent show?

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

10. How do Suyuan Woo’s ambitions in the beginning of the story set up the central conflict in “Two Kinds”?

(see the answer keys)

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