Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Have you read that book? I suggest you do so immediately.

Before I went to Spain, I asked Julia for a book to read on the plane. She told me to read Joy Luck Club, which turned out to be an excellent suggestion because it's divided into vignettes so I could go for long periods without reading and not forget what had happened previously. I quite enjoyed it, and it brought up an interesting point about second generation Chinese women working very hard to avoid turning into their mothers (a point that certainly applies to women in many other categories as well) and because of that not disciplining their children very well at all. Or, from a more caucasian perspective, being more lenient and having more respect for their children's points of view. About six months later, the Amy Chua article that went viral showed up in my news feed and I decided to read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, also per Julia's recommendation.

The book offended my mother greatly. I told her she had to read it before she continued making judgmental statements about Asian parenting, and certainly before she continued to use the term "tiger mom" without understanding its origin. So she did, and she was not impressed. My parents went to an inexpensive state college in Virginia and are firm believers that success is a result of how well you do with what you have rather than what college you go to or how muh you earn. A successful person is a happy person to them, and they would much rather have happy children than kids who fit a culturally defined idea of success. Unfortunately for them, they have three very intelligent children, and three children who doubt their parents frequently. My mother hated it when I joined Prism as a six year old and adults discussed sending their children to Ivy League schools. At that time, she saw all Ivy League students as conceited and wanted nothing to do with them, and it wasn't until last year that I even considered going to a well reputed college because unlike most of my peers, I was worried that my parents would be annoyed if I applied to prestigious schools.

But both books were interesting reads for me, because even if a majority of my close friends are Chinese, I'm always afraid to bring up stereotypes of Chinese or any East Asian culture lest I be labelled as an ignorant white person. Chinese culture in the US is pretty different from Indian culture in the US; Chinese culture is about doing well in American society by Chinese standards, whereas Indians in the US are concerned with keeping Indian culture alive in their families while succeeding by American standards. The few people I know who have done Chinese cultural dance have done it of their own deciding, and have sometimes been required to stop because of their parents. Asian Americans are labelled with piano, violin, tennis, ping pong, chess, nail salons, or hair dressers. These are certainly not defining parts of most Asian cultures, they are defining parts of the Asian American culture that has developed from Asian people coming to America and working to do well by our standards.

Is Asian parenting better? Maybe. Maybe I'm just spiting my mother, it's happened before, but once I finished the book my mother, my sister, and I had a conversation about the things we'd missed out on during our childhoods by not having Asian parents-- my mom let us decide what activities we wanted to do and if at any point we decided to stop, we were perfectly within our rights. Hence I was a ballerina for a month, a gymnast for a month, a horseback rider for a couple years, an Irish dancer for three or four years, and am now giving up distance running after four years. I have a little bit of experience in a lot of fields, but my sister and I both wish we had something we'd been good at, and to some extent parents who forced us to work at it in the beginning, when we weren't so pleased to do so. On the other hand, not every Asian parent is Amy Chua and most of them are not as intense of parents or nearly as accomplished of people in the US. Plenty of Asian people are offended that she is reiterating a stereotype that they've tried so hard to get rid of, but on the other hand Chua's form of parenting results in some very successful kids, and for as much as people suggest that it creates parent-child resentment, white parents such as mine who shower their kids with love and leave everything to the child's choice receive quite a bit of resentment as well.

Henna

So I have a good friend who is Indian, and a few of us slept over at her house on Friday. It was nice, the four of us know each other pretty well and it was kind of a last hurrah for high school because I leave the day after graduation. In any case, her family is interesting because they are so eager to embrace American culture and yet so filled with Indian culture. It seems that for many cultures coming to the US it's hard to keep that balance--they fear that if they become too American, they will lose their heritage and the tradition that was once so important to them, and often Americans see other cultures as stuck up because they are unwilling to assimilate. I don't think that view is accurate and I certainly see merit in learning from other part of the world, but it is interesting that the Indian immigrants I know seem to take little issue with Americanization. Maybe I am wrong in this. Maybe there is a secret side to Indian culture that they hide so as to impress white people--if that's the case, it's working.

The thing about this family is that it's clear they have not given up all of their culture. My friend, A-, does bharata natyam, and she eats only Indian food at home (except cookies, sometimes she makes American cookies). This is a bit unfortunate for me because I don't like rice, but her family is always so excited to have white people over, and they find ways to be accomodating, which makes me a bit guilty. But the thing is that our families are actually pretty similar. Her dad and my dad work at the same company, and her mom is taking classes at the university here. A- has saris and gorgeous Indian clothing that she wears for dance or for cultural festivals like folklife, but you'd never know that unless you actually went to her house or watched a performance. One other thing that struck me as odd was her accent--usually it's some sort of an odd half-British accent, for which I have no explanation, but when A- talks to her parents her accent suddenly becomes a thick Indian one, and sometimes I couldn't tell if she was speaking English or Hindi.

All four of us had henna done at her house. This part was odd to me--it's always seemed to me that henna is one of those things white people do when they want to act multicultural or that white people use as a stereotype of Indian culture that is actually inaccurate, like churros for Mexico. But there we were, and A- was saying "wow, you're good at this," and the tricks about making it stay longer with lemon juice and whatever else are the same as the ones white people mention when immitating Indian people by doing their own henna. So I guess I'll learn to accept that no every stereotype or cultural symbol is inaccurate, and my only concern is that it won't come off in the next two weeks and I'll have this nice string of flowers drawn down my arm for prom...