Her mother brags to her Aunt Lindo about how good Jing-Mei is at playing the piano. She wants to show how smart and talented she believes that her daughter is. Jing-Mei purposefully defies that by not investing into the lessons and learning to play properly. After her disastrous performance at the piano recital, the narrator describes the look on Jing-Mei’s mother’s face. “I saw my mother’s face, her stricken face.” This shows the disappointment that her mother felt.
Now that’s growing up without a childhood. Jane Smiley seems like a great parent who cares about her children but to allow her daughters to put on makeup even entering their teenage years just isn’t right. Her girls where prematurely growing up, where behaving beyond their age, and with their only priority being beautiful at all times it seem to help them in the long run. As they burned off the “Barbie stage” and grew into more important things down their lives. Like for example Smiley talks about her older daughter, “Now she is planning to graduate school and law school and become an expert on woman’s health issues, perhaps adolescent health issues like anorexia and bulimia” (377).
Jing-Mei finally told her mom her honest truth about her playing the piano. While Jing-Mei’s mom was forcing Jing-Mei to play the piano she said, “Why don’t you like who I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano.” (Tan 35). Jing-Mei was honest because she knew she couldn’t play, but she still tried.
Aside from constantly arguing with her brother, she is raising a child on her own. And she is using this child to keep the spirits of the piano alive. “I want you yo help me, I want you to help me Mama Berniece, I want you to help me Mama Esther, I want you to help me Papa Boy Charles, I want you to help me Mama Ola.” These are the people carved into this sacred piano, and although Berniece had tried to give the spirits a rest by not playing the piano in years, but by having her daughter play, August Wilson proves that parts of her didn’t want to let go of the soul of the piano. And when she finally comes face to face with her fears of the piano, and plays this song, it seems life flowed back into her body. Before all of this happened, however, she claimed that she lived at the bottom of life.
Her mother comes from superior background. Her mother plays the piano beautifully and, whenever she plays, Billie Jo's father stands in the doorway and watches her with something in his eyes Billie Jo hardly ever sees. Billie Jo also plays piano, but not as good as her mom, and as she says in the book, she wishes she can
Ribbons Book Report By Paige Robison Ribbons is a fictional story written by Laurence Yep about a young girl who is forced to give up her greatest passion in order to help her family bring her grandmother to the United States. Although ballet means everything to 11-year-old Robin Lee, she is forced to give up her lessons. Her parents need every cent they can save to fulfill their long held dream of bringing her grandmother over from China before Hong Kong becomes part of the communist mainland. Although Robin is crushed by her parent’s decision, she is determined to maintain her skill by practicing alone and with friends, but it is difficult and she feels that she will not be able to achieve as much in ballet since she is forced to quit
Soon enough her father died and kids started picking on her about her complexion. Char the most popular girl in the grade, makes a deal with Maleeka that if she does her homework for her Char will always stick up for her and allow Maleeka to borrow clothes. Maleeka wants to be so liked by people in school she agrees and starts hanging out with Char. A new teacher than arrives at the school. Miss Saunders also gets made fun of because of the big blotch she has on her face which is her birth mark.
There, Schumann immediately fell in love with Clara’s piano playing and moved in with her family in order to study music with Wieck. During that period, Wieck recognized Schumann’s talent, however doubted him as an unstable and undisciplined being – which was perhaps be one of the reason that Wieck objected to his marriage with Clara later. During Schumann’s time with Wieck, Schumann’s passion for Clara grew and finally they were in love in 1835. When Clara was on tour in Europe, they sent letters that expressed their love and the excruciating pain it was to endure without seeing each other. When Clara turned nineteen, she confessed to Wieck about her relationship with Schumann.
We can see that Edna is moved by Mademoiselle on page 26 when “[she] struck upon the piano [and] sent a keen tremor down” Edna’s spine. There was a connection that Edna felt, when Mademoiselle was done it was like nothing else mattered but Edna. She ignored everyone’s enthusiasm for her work and went straight up to Edna where she stated “you are the only one worth playing for. Those other? Bah!” (26).
Dee was consistently ungrateful and displeased with her life despite her mother's hard work. “I see her [Dee] standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.” This shows just how much Dee cared about her lifestyle and the location of the house.