Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior Amy Chua Summary

Shame and guilt can go hand in hand, as seen in; Flight, The Glass Castle, and The Joy Luck Club. As the three novels progress, many of the characters suffer with inner shame and guilt. While the characters suffer with these things, it somehow seems to shape and change them. Through the characters hardships and struggles, the theme of shame and guilt emerges.

For first generation Americans, finding belonging in a new country can feel impossible. They are often caught between the traditions and ideals of the two differing countries. Raising a family in the new home with different values can lead to miscommunications or even a significant disconnect between parents and children. This is modeled well in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, particularly in the relationship between Ying Ying Saint Clair and her daughter Lena. The prejudice Ying Ying Saint Clair feels for American culture causes her to have a difficult time understanding and communicating with her daughter.

On the occasion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self Reliance,” Joy Zhou chooses to positively embrace his writing in a reflective argument. Although the essay seems to present itself in a traditional style, her words resemble a more opinionated approach that is supported by her personal life; she comes across as an inspired individual who agrees with Emerson’s ideology. Zhou tackles her claim by breaking off short quotes from Emerson’s essay directly and supporting his relevance with modern, personal experiences. Her first main paragraph discusses Emerson’s quote, “‘[t]here is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.’” Responding, Zhou provides an anecdote in which

As many Chinese-Americans grew up in the 1960’s, one women described it best in her multiple literary works. Bestselling, Chinse-American writer, Amy Tan in her autobiographic essay, “Fish Cheeks”, illustrates her humiliating experience at a Christmas Eve dinner at the age of fourteen. Tan’s purpose is to interpret the idea of how her mother cared for Tan deeply and wanted her to be proud of her Chinese heritage and family. She adopts a nostalgic tone in order to engage relatable thoughts and feelings in her adult readers. Even decades after the essay had been written, readers can still relate to the embarrassing situation that Tan had to face.

American lawyer and author, Amy Chua in her essay, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”, compares and contrast the stereotypical success of Chinese children versus the children of Western. 70% of Western mothers said that “stressing academic success is not good for children”, while roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Chua’s purpose is to the point that Chinese children repay their parents by obeying them and making them proud, but Western parents don’t have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. She adopts a formal tone in order to explain Chinese children’s success, in her intended audience, Chinese parents. Chua achieves her purpose through the use of anecdote and selection of details.

I have no qualms telling others that I was left on the side of a dirt road as a newborn baby. For many in the United States, the image is appalling. However, for most adopted Chinese-Americans it’s a harsh reality. Growing up I had the disadvantage of balancing between two cultures: the one I was born into, and the one I grew up in.

Little children in China also get a better education because of the policy. A.J. Song also says that Chinese research shows an advantage in education, “they tend to score better on intelligence tests…” He also says,” If you have more kids in your family, they’re probably lacking in education…” (Document F). Children that have a sibling have to split the attention with each other, so when they don’t have a sibling, they get a better education. When all the attention is on them, their parents can help them.

The story of Jung Chang’s parents shows that the lack of efficient institutions, the stratification of society, and plight of the common man made China vulnerable to nationalism. Through “Wild Swans” one sees that as the Chinese people became more empowered, nationalism became more favorable. Essentially, “Wild Swans” shows how and why Mao was able to influence the Chinese through nationalism. The story of Jung Chang’s parents is the medium through which Chang describes nationalism.

The main subject of this chapter is to introduce the racial discrimination Asian-Americans suffered simply because of their skin color. The author argues in this chapter that Americans are frequently subject to assume that Asians are foreigners, having no knowledge of their past or family. A specific piece of evidence that the author uses to support his case is the example of when he went to college and was invited to dinners for foreign students, despite the fact that his family had lived in America for three generations.

What kind of power can change the world? Is Military or weapon? Of course not, the most important power that can change the world is imagination. However only have the imagination is not enough, because it also need knowledge to make imagination become to true. Likes hundred years age, everyone had the dream that they wanted to fly in the sky. So they had this imagination, then they use their knowledge to build a plane to fly. In the article “Passible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?” Alison Gopnik points out that a lot of young children have the imagination which better than the adult, because the children’s imagination are “counterfactuals” which means it maybe happened in future, but not now. The adults’ imagination will limit by their

Kieu Tran’s comprehensive diction produces a clear distinction between American and Asian culture with examples of “physical punishment in Asian traditions is not considered child abuse” and “in America, there is no way that Asian parents can physically punish their children, if their children perform badly.” Kieu Tran touches on the ideas that America relies heavily on the thought of equality between any person, whether it is a minor or an adult, and the effects it has on Asian immigrant families, especially from Vietnam. In America, beating a child for whatever reason is automatically classified as child abuse, and it can lead to days in jail, like what happened to Mr. Ma and his daughter. Mr. Ma struck his daughter twice, which led to him

The article is about Jennie Chine Hansen speech that was given for the Chinese American Women Oral History Project. Hansen discusses in her speech about the ways exclusion, participation and empowerment shaped not just her life but the lives of all Chinese people living in America. Hansen during her speech also talks about the brief history of Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892 and how that had a significant impact on the parents and grandparents of Chinese American women. She also talks about how there are two generations, the ones who were born in China and the ones who were born in America. She discusses how there is an alienation from her parents and other Chinese people who never learned to speak English who live in America. She refers to the idea that it was not only language that separated the older generation, but that discrimination also played a large role in alienating them. Hansen talks about how her mother was not completely constrained by Chinese tradition. Hansen discusses the struggles her family had as two different generations of Chinese and Chinese Americans.

Kieu Tran’s solemn tone reflects on the hardships that Americanization has caused Asians through the context of “the stereotype that Asian parents always hit their children” and how “Western culture and customs have destroyed the Vietnamese family structure”. Tran expresses how Americanization has given asian children more freedom, but in turn it has devastated the structure of a close-knit family. The U.S. is the land of the free, where people are protected by the law, and hitting your children is unjust. However, in asian culture, it is natural for a child to be reprimanded through spanking, hitting, or other forms of punishment. It ensures that children of asian parents will try their best to not make the same mistake again. In the U.S.

After reading this essay by Amy Chua, I can’t say I was persuaded to believe that Chinese mothers are superior. I am not debating the success of their children, however, as a Western American mother, I feel that we measure our kids’ success in other ways then just academics. Chua mostly backed up her beliefs by her own personal experience and the results of one case study.

Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, has created an article called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that intensively describes differences in the usage of parenting methods in Chinese and Westerners culture. The author has personally raised her children in a highly strict manner so her children succeed in life and academics. Chua often refers to the term “Chinese mother” that describes her parenting style apart from Western parents. The main purpose of this article is to show the two parenting techniques and how they affect the child 's success. Amy Chua’s intense Chinese mother style is extremely hard on children.