Module 1: "Two Kinds" (from The Joy Luck Club) by Amy Tan

"Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine.

The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again.

In all of my imaginings I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect: My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach.

I would never feel the need to sulk, or to clamor for anything.

I had new thoughts, willful thoughts—or rather, thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.

So now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I pretended to be bored.

She seemed entranced by the music, a frenzied little piano piece with a mesmerizing quality, which alternated between quick, playful passages and teasing, lilting ones.

The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple.

She was proudly modest, like a proper Chinese Child.

And she also did a fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded to the floor like petals of a large carnation.

I soon found out why Old Chong had retired from teaching piano. He was deaf. "Like Beethoven!" he shouted to me. "We're both listening only in our head!" And he would start to conduct his frantic silent sonatas.

And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple chord, and then, as if inspired by an old unreachable itch, he would gradually add more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand.

He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so that I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios.

He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato, like an obedient little soldier.

And Old Chong kept conducting his own private reverie.

But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different, and I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different, and I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

And so we watched it all: the eighteen-year-old boy with a fake moustache who did a magic show and juggled flaming hoops while riding a unicycle. The breasted girl with white makeup who sang an aria from Madame Butterfly and got an honorable mention.

I felt the same way, and everybody seemed now to be coming up, like gawkers at the scene of an accident to see what parts were actually missing.

"I'm not going to play anymore," I said nonchalantly.