I read all of Chua's books after seeing the controversial WSJ excerpt "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." I think one of her main ideas is stated in that piece: western parents view love as accepting and supporting their children for whoever they are and whatever they want to be, whereas Chinese parents view love as pushing their children to be the best that they can be and refusing to give up on them no matter what. Chua had put it more bluntly, something like: white people think love means telling their kid it's ok to be a loser; Chinese parents think love means telling their kids they're not losers, or at least have the ability to rise out of loser-dom if they work hard.
Chua's voice is hilarious, intelligent, human, aggressive, and insanely blunt. This combination makes her offensive to many people but the way she mocks herself endears her to me. She's self aware enough to know that she can be wrong and that she can be overly obsessive. I liked the book mainly because it was an entertaining, touching, well written memoir. It also contains insights into Asian culture and values, and into human nature in general. I don't think it's intended to be instructional or preachy- she's not trying to use her memoir as an "Autobiography of Malcolm X"-like call to action. Although I do think Chua thinks she's right about almost everything and her daughters are amazing, I don't think she thinks everyone else should strive to be like her, nor do I think her "we must be the best / we are the best" attitude is the message of the book- it's just her personality. The sheer amount of time and energy she put into the upbringing of her kids and into every project she approaches is staggering (even for an Asian person!), and I think she acknowledges that she's atypically obsessive and anal, for example when she relates funny anecdotes about how she tried applying her Chinese parenting methods to her fluffy, clueless dog.
As a memoir, Chua's book is great. Because of her writing, she makes me interested in her life even though she's not an important historical figure or anything. Her use of language really pushes the humor into the LOL zone for me (for instance she describes the discovery that her dog ranks low in intelligence as "nauseating"). In addition, I relate to a lot of what she's saying as a Chinese person. For example she proudly asserts for the record that she is the only Asian her husband has ever dated, and she has funny anecdotes about how first generation asians are so frugal they worry about using too much dish detergent. I think her bluntness will offend a lot of people because they take it to mean she is cruel or rude- she'll use words like "fatty," "lazy," and "loser," words that white people do not use casually in the presence of their children. In contrast many Asians are very ready to use those words and it isn't meant to just insult for the sake of hurting someone's feelings. It's a cultural difference that Chinese people are less tactful and more blunt in their language, particularly when they are talking to family.
The book describes some Asian ideas that dominate how Chinese people approach life and raise their children. I am Chinese, I went to MIT, and I was/am an over-achiever in many ways. However I was not raised in the way Chua described- my parents had no time to harass me to do anything (I was a latchkey child and they never even saw any of my report cards or knew which colleges I'd applied to till after I got in), so I was driven not due to force but simply because I absorbed my parents' values into my psyche. The Chinese philosophy is this:
1) The future is everything. The present is about suffering so that the glorious future will one day be achieved, and the past is to be repressed except when you want to compare its horrors to the awesomeness that will be the future.
2) Chinese people accept sacrifice and suffering as everyday experiences. Childhood is not idyllic- it's about preparing, suffering within the confines of institutional learning so that they're well positioned when the real world hits. Chinese people would never underestimate their children's ability to suffer or work because many Chinese people suffered atrocities throughout their lives. My dad's whole family starved to death during the cultural revolution and I'd often wake in the night to find him eating all the leftovers in the fridge, so I would never allow myself to be waylaid by some stupid exam. An idea that is implicit here is that achievement is related to hard work/practice. This sounds like an obvious idea but I think it is made more explicit in Chinese culture than in other cultures- while most people will view something like tennis as a skill obviously related to practice, many people might not make that association as readily with something like math ability.
3) Chinese parents view children's judgment as vastly inferior to their own judgment. Up to a point this is valid, because children's brains are growing and for at least a decade they are not capable of making decisions that are rational or long term optimal. But Chinese parents sometimes take this to an extreme and will ignore a kid's decisions even when the kid's brain is well developed. This idea may seem to contrast with the high expectations parents have for kids but it really just means that the kids are supposed to perform towards the goals the adults have decided. Any parent of those prodigy kids who are professional golfers/tennis players by age 13 have already figured out that kids will put in a lot of work and energy into a goal that has been decided by the parent. The big problem with this view is that the kids eventually need to have good judgment of their own, to have the confidence to pursue their own goals. Furthermore it's human nature to be unhappy if you feel you have no control. Unless the kid also incorporates the idea of long term happiness as a goal, the kid is just doing the work to please the parent and this is not healthy or sustainable.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a hilarious, smart, moving account of a Chinese American mother's life and learn something about Chinese culture. If you were offended by the WSJ piece, I'd recommend taking a look at the end of this book. I'd been very curious what her daughters thought of her piece and it turns out her family helped her edit every page. Their reactions were very funny and real, too. And, amazingly, both daughters tell her they were glad she forced them to practice their instruments 6 hours a day. But they're still <18 years old- they still have time to start hating her more in the future, a fact of which she seems well aware. The story is still happening, so the writing at the end is not as tight as the beginning but she comes to some conclusions that are very different from what the sensationalist WSJ piece might imply.
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Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
Very funny and actually heartwarming
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2024Client d'Amazon
Excellentissime ! Enfin un livre sans politiquement correct dans un monde occidental bien pensant
Reviewed in France on January 10, 2023