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.
More reads on the Asian diaspora
Being an Asian Southerner Means Being an Anomaly, Squared
“This is how I know an Asian South exists: I miss it.”
Generation Connie
“Growing up, I thought being named after Connie Chung made me unique. Then I found out about the rest of us.”
What’s Not in a Name?
“Names are choices—just usually not ours.”
What My Korean Father Taught Me About Defending Myself in America
“And he said something I would never forget. ‘The best fighter in tae kwon do never fights,’ he said. ‘He always finds another way.”
This Is Where 150 Years Of Ignoring Anti-Asian Racism Got Us
“For so long, we’ve thought keeping our heads down and being invisible in America might help us gain acceptance — but the recent wave of racist violence has shattered that myth.”
