Sunday, May 24, 2015

Tiger Mom: The Domesticated Version of the Asian Female Assassin


Tiffany Do
ASA 2 Section 2
Week 9 Blog

In response to “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” and “Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom”:
In my blog this week, I wanted to focus on Amy Chua’s article and then her daughter’s public response (in defense of her mom and her parenting style) to the outrage and criticism Chua faced. I guess the big question here was why did so many people take Chua’s article so seriously? Her daughter even says that people failed to understand the humor in the original article and that it “[isn’t] their fault” because “no outsider can know what [their] family is really like” (“Why I Love”, 2). Based on what we’ve learned in class about Asian American female stereotypes, it isn’t really surprising why many took what Chua wrote to heart. The Tiger Mom, who is characterized by being super strict, does not look that much different from the heartless Asian female assassin that we see in movies over and over again… Except this time, her setting is no longer the fast-paced action taking place somewhere in the Orient. Her setting is the household. She’s like the domesticated version of the Asian female assassin. Did Amy Chua write this article in humor as a way to point out how closely the American public relies on stereotypes? I doubt it. Even so, her article and the response that people had to it, shows us how far we haven’t come.

Question:
Why might the stereotype of the Tiger Mom be so readily accepted in regards to Asian Americans and not other ethnic groups?


The quote at the top of the picture says this book is a “journey through the Chinese-American family culture.” Amy Chua is not representative of all Chinese American mothers!

 

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