Waverly Jong starts playing chess at a young age after her brother receives a chess set for Christmas. She meets a man who teaches her everything he knows about the game. Waverly becomes a great player and her mom signs her up for many competitions. Waverly seems to get sick of the game, and fights with her mother quite a bit. In the end, Waverly and her mom play a game.
The Voice From the Wall:
Lena and her parents move to San Francisco, where her mother is constantly fretting about the house. Lena also constantly hears what she believe is the girl living next door (Teresa) getting beaten, but whenever Lena sees Teresa, Teresa is fine. After time, Lena's mother's newborn child dies, and Lena's mother slowly falls apart. Her mother frets about evils in the house, and later learns to deal with her problems.
Half and Half:
Rose is going to get divorced, and has no clue how to tell An-Mei. Rose has had issues in the marriage from the start. After leaving him, she goes off with An-Mei, and gets to watch over Bing, whom she later loses in the river. She realizes that faith cannot change fate, as she discovers: "fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention."
Two Kinds:
Throughout the beginning, Jing-mei talks about her past and childhood, in which there were many issues. In Jing-mei's past, Suyuan makes her take piano lessons after seeing a nine-year-old Chinese girl play the piano on The Ed Sullivan Show. Jing-mei gets a mentor, who turns out to be deaf, so she decides to only keep rhythm and not correct her mistakes. She signs up for a recital, but does not practice at all, believing the prodigy within her would shine when needed. She fails miserably and is embarrassed. Suyuan encourages her to practice more, but Jing-mei disagrees and wishes her dead like her other sisters. Later, Suyuan passes, and Jing-mei realizes that the songs she played were like Yin and Yang; complimentary to each other.
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