"Two Kinds" Summery Poem

My name is Jing-mei.
My mother is from China.
She has two dead daughters.
She never talks to me about her babies so she never sheds tears over them.

My mother is such a strong-willed person.
She wishes I was a prodigy.
She wishes me to be a genius
She wants me to be like Shirley Temple.
To practice shaking my curls if I had any and making my O’s

She took me to a beauty college to get my hair cut just like her.
It looked frizzy and she told me I was like a Negro Chinese
I had to get it cut like a Peder Pan hair cut.
I look like a boy

My mother cleans houses and likes to find magazines.
When she finds one about a child prodigy she like to quiz me to she if i have their talent.
She is filled with misery when she realized I can’t do what she asks.
She makes it her capital duty do make me a prodigy that I am not.

She watches TV and sees a girl with a Peder Pan hair cut who plays the piano.
She asks Mr.Chong to give me piano lessons.
He lives in my apartment building.
He is a deaf man who teaches me the keys and notes.
When I sit on the bench and try to play there are many mistakes.
But he can not hear them.

My mother makes me a schedule to practice for two hours a day
But I do not want to
Her friend brags about her daughter Waverly’s trophies.
My mother brags back about my music
But I have no talent

She wants me to be in a talent show to prove my talent.
She makes me memorize a song called “Pleading Child”
When I practice I do not really practice
On stage I sit down and play but no beautiful music comes out
It is only terrible music with many mistakes
The audience does not clap when I finish
I have showed my mother betrayal.

We get home and my mother is disappointed.
She doesn't make me play the piano for two days
I refuse and yell
She yells back saying she only wished for me to do my best.
I say I wish I was never born
She is hurt and doesn't talk to me for a while

My mother does not talk about playing the piano anymore
Years later my mother asks me if I would like the piano in our living room
I say no but still but am grateful she offered
my mother dies later and I take some of her belongings for sentimental reasons
I want to remember her
I am a rebel that my mother did not want me to be
that is how I am a prodigy.