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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. “Two Kinds” is a short story from Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club. This collection of short stories revolves around the lives of Chinese immigrant women who form a club and play what game?
(a) Chinese checkers
(b) Bridge
(c) Chess
(d) Mah-jongg

2. What color dress does Jing-Mei describe the girl wearing that she watches playing piano on The Ed Sullivan Show with her mother?
(a) Green
(b) Blue
(c) White
(d) Yellow

3. In what year did the film Bright Eyes bring Shirley Temple international fame?
(a) 1951
(b) 1934
(c) 1948
(d) 1959

4. What word from the story means to play music with a vibratory or quavering effect?
(a) Sonata
(b) Bass
(c) Treble
(d) Trill

5. Jing-Mei describes the girl playing piano on The Ed Sullivan Show as having the sauciness of whom?
(a) John Wayne
(b) Little Orphan Annie
(c) Peter Pan
(d) Shirley Temple

Short Answer Questions

1. What musical term from the story means pertaining to the lowest part in harmonic music?

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 do with the Chinese silk dresses she finds when sorting through her mother’s things at the end of the story?

4. Of her first lessons with Mr. Chong, Jing-Mei says, “I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord and then I just played some nonsense that sounded like” what?

5. How does Jing-Mei say her academic career ended in “Two Kinds”?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Who attends the talent show when Jing-Mei performs? How does Jing-Mei take the stage?

3. How does the narrative style in “Two Kinds” shift throughout the story? Why does it shift?

4. What does Jing-Mei overhear her mother saying about her to Auntie Lindo midway through the story?

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

6. 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?

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

8. 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?

9. How does Jing-Mei describe the piano at her parents’ house when she returns following her mother’s death?

10. How does Jing-Mei respond to her mother’s comment about her to Auntie Lindo? What foreshadowing follows this scene?

(see the answer keys)

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