In "Two Kinds," Jing-Mei Woo narrates the difficulty that she had with her mother over the piano lessons which she no longer wanted to take. Early in the story, Jing-Mei says that she practiced piano because it was a popular thing to do according to the media. Jing-Mei thinks that her mother Suyuan wants her to be a piano prodigy because she pushes her to practice and perform. Jing-Mei, however, never excels at the piano and she makes an embarrassment of herself at a recital. She tells her mother that she wants to stop playing, and her mother rebukes her. Jing-Mei brings up the two daughters that Suyuan abandoned in mainland China. The statement hurts her mother and drives a wedge between the two. The goal of the story is to explore the cultural divide and difficulty in understanding and communication that exists between the mother and her daughter.
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