Questions:
“Two Kinds”
1.What high hopes did the mother have for her daughter?
2.How did the daughter behave in her piano lesson? Why?
3.What caused the tension between the mother and the daughter? Did cultural clashes complicate the relationship between the two generations?If so, in what manner?
4.Why did the mother shut up immediately in her quarrel with the daughter when the latter mentioned the twin babies in Guilin? Did the mother have a secret? If your answer is yes, could you guess what secret it was? How did the fate of the twin babies influence the mother’s relationship with Jing-mei?
5.Is there a sign of reconciliation between the mother and daughter toward the end of this section? If your answer is yes, prove your point.
6.Do you think the characterization of the mother is successful? How does her language reveal her identity as a Chinese immigrant? In conversations, when and why did she switch from English to Chinese?
7.What does the title “Two Kinds” mean? How is it related with the theme of the story?
8.How does the story end? How does the author make the theme of the story clear to us readers by this ending?
“Best Quality”
9.Did Jing-mei like the jade pendant her mother gave her? Why did she often think of it these days?
10.Did Jing-mei have a successful career compared with Waverly,Auntie Lindo’s daughter?
11.What kind of woman was Waverly?
12.How did Waverly insult Jing-mei in a subtle way? How did Jing-Mmi feel after the dinner?
13.Did the mother think Jing-mei was outsmarted by Waverly? Did she want to comfort her daughter by giving her the jade pendant? Why did she give the jade pendant to her daughter? How would you interpret the symbolic meaning of the jade pendant?
14.What does “Best Quality” refer to?
15.Why does the story end with the tenants and the tomcat?
“A Pair of Tickets”
16.How did Jing-mei feel the minute their train left the Hong Kong border and entered Shenzhen? What does this mean?
17.Did she accept her Chinese heritage when she was a teenager?How did she feel about the idea of having Chinese blood in her when she was young?
18.Did Jing-mei understand her mother? Did she know what it meant to be a Chinese when she was young? What does this reveal?
19.What did the Joy Luck Club aunties write in their letter to Jing-mei’s twin sisters in China?
20.What do you think of the novel’s ending by describing the meeting of the three sisters?
21.Having read the three stories, how would you comment on the relationship between the mother and daughter?