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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. When Jing-Mei has a revelation while staring at herself in the bathroom mirror as a child, she says, “I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts willed with lots of” what?

2. How does Jing-Mei describe her family’s television at the time when her mother watched The Ed Sullivan Show?

3. What are the names of the families from the Joy Luck Club that come up to Jing-Mei’s mother and father after Jing-Mei’s performance at the talent show?

4. Jing-Mei describes the fingers of Mr. Chong’s mother as feeling like what?

5. What does the piano symbolize in “Two Kinds”?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens when Suyuan Woo quizzes her daughter on country capitals? What other activities does she test out on Jing-Mei when she is young?

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

3. 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?

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

5. What does Jing-Mei say in defense of the performer on the Ed Sullivan Show when she is criticized by her mother? How does this defense backfire?

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

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

8. What theme connects “Two Kinds” to the other stories in The Joy Luck Club?

9. How does the central conflict of the story begin to manifest in Jing-Mei’s mind following her revelation in the mirror?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss Ed Sullivan, Ginny Tiu and Edvard Grieg. How influential was The Ed Sullivan Show on the culture of America during the time that it aired? Who was Ginny Tiu and how does her image factor into the story? What music does Ginny Tiu play on the show and how does Jing-Mei’s mother respond?

Essay Topic 2

Describe and discuss the song “Pleading Child” from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood and examine the symbolism of this song in the story. How does this song correlate to Jing-Mei’s relationship with her mother? What does she later discover about the song?

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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