Plot Elements
What is the exposition?
What is Mrs. Woo wants her daughter to be a prodigy in 1950s San Francisco's Chinatown...She is making her daughter try everything to become famous.
Shirley Temple, Peter Pan, Reader's Digest, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and The Ed Sullivan Show are all this type of figurative language / literary device...
What are allusions?
What type of figurative language is this? "Her fingers felt like an old peach I discovered in the back of the refrigerator; it's skin just slid off."
What is a simile?
"Of course you can be prodigy, too." Who says this? What is a prodigy?
Who is Jing-mei's mother...a prodigy is a child with a special talent.
What is the conflict in this story?
What is Jing-mei struggles against her mother's wishes to develop a talent, play the piano, etc., be something she's not...
What is the rising action?
What is Jing-Mei starts piano lessons; cheats her way through it; and performs awfully at the talent show, embarrassing her family.
What is a simile?
“I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.” What type of figurative language is used here?
What is a simile
"I saw the devastated look in my mother's eyes." Who says this? What does devastated mean?
Who is Jing-mei? What is shocked, disappointed, or crushed in spirit?
Who does Amy Tan allude to repeatedly throughout the story?
Who is Shirley Temple / Ed Sullivan Show?
What is the climax?
What is Jing-Mei yells at her mother for trying to change her and says she wishes she was never born.
"Mother believed America opens doors for people." What type of figurative language is used here?
What is personification?
"I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air." What figurative language is this?
What is a metaphor?
The piano piece had this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones... What does mesmerizing mean?
What is hypnotizing?
What is the irony (the opposite of what we expect to happen) in the book?
What is that Jing-mei stubbornly tries NOT to develop a talent to spite her mother; however, by doing so, she fulfills her desire!
What is the falling action?
What is that Jing-mei's mom gave up on her daughter, so Jing-mei gave up on herself every being talented, too...
What does the piano symbolize?
What is hatred and disappointment in the beginning of the story; and her mother's belief in Jing-mei's self-worth and her ability to succeed in life (at the end of the story).
"I felt as though I had been sent to hell." What figurative language is this?
What is hyperbole (an exaggeration)?
The piano playing girl has the sauciness of a Shirley Temple. What does sauciness mean? What figurative language is used here?
What is boldness, liveliness, or being sassy? What is an ALLUSION, or reference, to the child actress, as well as a METAPHOR (the girl is compared to Shirley)?
What is the theme, (a message that the author wants us to learn)?
Some possible answers: a parent's American dream may not be their child's; we do not know what we've lost until it's gone (remembrance); parents and children struggle to find common ground and peace in their relationships.
What is the resolution?
What is mother and daughter make peace; Mrs. Woo dies; Jing-Mei realizes what her mother was trying to teach her, and also starts to play the piano again...
What is the metaphor at about the two songs, "Pleading Child" and "Perfectly Contented," about?
What is that both songs are two halves of the same song; put another way, the "pleading child" finds herself "perfectly happy" when she finds peace with her mother — and herself.
Why is the story called "Two Kinds"?
What is that there are two perspectives -- one from parents, one from children, as both struggle to relate to each other and pursue their American dreams...
"I'm not going to play anymore," I said listlessly. Who said this? What does it mean?
Who is Jing-mei? What is casually, in an uninterested way, or carelessly?
What was the point of view?
What is the 1st person (I, me, my mother, etc.)?