DISGRASIAN

If I have one bone to pick with Chua–and it’s not an insignificant one–it would be why. Why did she feel the need to strictly adhere to this so-called “Chinese parenting model” in the first place?

Because I get why my parents raised me that way (to a lesser extreme, I might add). My parents pushed me to be “the best”–and, uh, I’m not saying it worked, like, at all–but they pushed me because they knew, from their own experience, that being good, really good, and smart, better-educated than most, and working-harder-than-almost-everybody was very often…not good enough. Because being good and smart and better educated and a hard worker didn’t mean that you wouldn’t still be poor, treated like a fool, underemployed, shit on, chased off the road by rich white kids in cars while riding your bike, and forced to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door because you had to put day-old bread on the table for you and your kids, even while you held a Ph.D. in Physics. I get now why they raged against our mistakes and poor preparation; mistakes were what made your brother miss the last boat out and left him to fend for himself in a war-torn country at age 14, poor preparation landed your grandmother in a labor camp. After many years, I even understand the rules and punishments that my parents imposed on us as children that seemed so inscrutable then, why my father wouldn’t let us watch comedies, or why he wouldn’t speak to us sometimes for days when we rented a movie that, for one mysterious reason or another, offended him. Because for years, there was, quite simply, nothing to laugh about.

But Chua, by her own account, isn’t parenting under the same pressure. Although she also calls Chinese parenting “immigrant parenting,” she isn’t an immigrant. (Her parents were, immigrating to the U.S. in 1960.) Her childhood resembles mine and that of many second-generation kids–a mix of an Asian upbringing–speaking the family’s native tongue at home, drilling math and piano, report cards with nothing but A’s–and American influences: Girl Scouts, roller skating, and Dairy Queen.

Jen Wang, “‘Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother’: You Hated The Excerpt, Now Read The Book” [Disgrasian]