Asian Mothers, Bad Feelings: Notes on An All-conquering Stereotype

Using Amy Chua’s 2011 Wall Street Journal piece about “tiger moms” as an entry point, Rebecca Liu traces the “difficult Asian mother” in diasporic literature and film, from The Joy Luck Club to Crazy Rich Asians. She argues that this character is less a stereotype than a vessel, carrying within it the suppressed trauma and rage of a generation of Chinese women shaped by hardship, war, and Confucian patriarchy. Liu also speaks with women of her own generation—children of these mothers—who reflect candidly about their childhoods, and their complex, often unresolved relationships with the women who raised them.

These mothers face a double bind. They hope to raise children unburdened by the past, comfortable in their new homeland, enjoying opportunities they never had themselves. If they succeed – as with many immigrant parents around the world – their prize is a child who is unintelligible to them. Hence all the conflicts, a familiar plot line in fiction and reality, between children who want to be artists and their horrified parents; the battles over sexuality and life choices; the standoffs and estrangements and waits for the elusive apology that will heal everything.