Student Question
Why did Jing-mei's mother in "Two Kinds" read so many magazines?
Quick answer:
Jing-mei's mother reads so many magazines because she is looking for stories about remarkable children. She has decided that Jing-mei is going to be a child prodigy, just like the ones she reads about in magazines and sees performing in talent contests on TV.
Jing-mei's mother works as a house cleaner. From the various houses that she cleans, she has managed to gather up quite a few magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest, and Ripley's Believe It or Not. She searches them meticulously, looking for stories of remarkable children.
Inspired by seeing talented kids perform on TV talent shows, Jing-mei's mother has become convinced that her daughter can be a child prodigy. And her deep-seated conviction is bolstered by the many wonderful stories of remarkable children she reads in the magazines she has studiously collected.
In one such magazine, there is a story about a three-year-old boy who can name all the states and their capitals as well as the capitals of most European countries. The boy can even pronounce their names correctly.
Jing-mei's mother devises tests for her daughter based on the extraordinary feats of the children she reads about. On the basis of the three-year-old boy who knows lots of capital cities, she asks Jing-mei if she knows the capital of Finland. Jing-mei doesn't know; the only capital she knows is the state capital of California, Sacramento. So she takes a wild guess: Nairobi. Not surprisingly, this turns out to be wrong. For Nairobi is the capital of Kenya; the capital of Finland is Helsinki.
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