Imagine the Most Boring Woman You Know Telling You about Her Two Gifted and Talented Children
A Bunch of Stereotypes, Followed By a Bunch of Disclaimers, Followed By No Story At All
Parent This Way, Except It Didn't Work for Me 50% of The Time
People Will Buy Any Kind of Shit Book On Parenting, So Here You Go
I honestly don't know why this Amy Chua' book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother became a bestseller, or why it's gotten such a huge media barrage. I got to page 60, was bored, read the end, was bored, and was annoyed by whatever extra bits I read in the middle. Let me nutshell it for you: Pushy woman, in the name of being a "Chinese parent," pushes her kids to be their best at academics and music. Except she's not really a Chinese parent (which is just a convenient label for provoking outrage in the media; she says "I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise," p. 4), which is why she "lets" her second, rebellious daughter ease up a bit on the violin. (Her first daughter's personality was more amenable to being pushed, evidently, as she never really rebelled.) Seriously. That's the arc of the story.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for a book about these sort of rich people problems (Gasp! My child wants to take tennis rather than violin!) I know I don't have the time to read about some woman who needs her children to be the best at everything to do--and I certainly don't want to stop and think about the days when CRjr has to go to school and I might have to interact with parents like this. It's too depressing for words. Back to the library with this one.