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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Jing-Mei tell her mother she wishes she were like as they argue about piano practice after the talent show?

2. What musical term from Jing-Mei’s piano lessons means characterized by abruptness and disconnectedness?

3. “Two Kinds” is a short story that was initially published in what periodical in February 1989?

4. Jing-Mei says in the beginning of “Two Kinds,” “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open” what?

5. What does Jing-Mei’s mother do to earn money for the family when Jing-Mei is a child?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Jing-Mei find when she takes her bow after her performance at the talent show?

2. What do the Schumann songs at the end of the story represent symbolically?

3. How does Jing-Mei describe the piece she is to play at the talent show? How does she describe her practice for the performance?

4. Why do you think the author chose to set the story (and the others in The Joy Luck Club) in San Francisco?

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

6. What are Suyuan Woo’s views of opportunity in America, as noted by the narrator in the opening of the story?

7. What offer does Jing-Mei’s mother make her approaching Jing-Mei’s thirtieth birthday?

8. How does Jing-Mei describe her life as she passed from childhood to adulthood? In what ways does she say she disappointed her mother?

9. How and when did the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act influence immigration in the U.S.?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe and discuss the genre and tone of the story. Define these terms in your response and discuss how “Two Kinds” could be categorized into different genres. How does the author establish the tone of the story in the first pages?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the actions, objectives, and obstacles of Jing-Mei Woo in “Two Kinds.” What is Jing-Mei’s ultimate goal (objective) in the story? How does she go about achieving this objective? What obstacles stand in her way? How does she overcome these obstacles?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the history of Chinese immigration in the United States. In what ways have Chinese immigrants faced different hurdles in assimilating into American or other Western cultures as immigrants? How is this seen in Jing-Mei’s family in “Two Kinds”?

(see the answer keys)

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