In "Two Kinds," which is written from Jing-mei's point of view, Waverly Jong is mentioned as a childhood rival. As Jing-mei is learning to play the piano--badly, as it turns out--her mother and Waverly's mother have a conversation after church that intensifies Jing-mei's mother's desires to turn Jing-mei into a prodigy. Waverly is a true prodigy. She has won multiple chess championships and is known as "Chinatown's Littlest Chinese Chess Champion." Auntie Lindo flaunts Waverly's...
In "Two Kinds," which is written from Jing-mei's point of view, Waverly Jong is mentioned as a childhood rival. As Jing-mei is learning to play the piano--badly, as it turns out--her mother and Waverly's mother have a conversation after church that intensifies Jing-mei's mother's desires to turn Jing-mei into a prodigy. Waverly is a true prodigy. She has won multiple chess championships and is known as "Chinatown's Littlest Chinese Chess Champion." Auntie Lindo flaunts Waverly's success, making Jing-mei and especially her mother feel inadequate.
This story doesn't give the background of how Waverly became a chess champion. That tale is told in "Rules of the Game," another story in the Joy Luck Club collection. The Jong children received a used chess set at a church Christmas party. Waverly's mother doesn't appreciate the gift, but the boys begin to play. Waverly learns the rules not from her brothers but by researching them in the library. She then is able to beat her brothers at chess. She finds an old Chinese man playing chess in the park and asks him to play with her. He teaches her more advanced strategies. Waverly begins to win some neighborhood games, and then she enters some contests. At only nine years old, she becomes a national chess champion.
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