I had a conversation with a close Vietnamese friend who admitted one thing which knocked me cold and silent: "I hate my mom."Mind you, she is 24, not 15. And her mom is that traditional Asian-American parent that Yale law professor Amy Chua wrote so favorably about in her article in the "Washington Post," entitled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." The slightly hyperbolic and seemingly article, a snippet from Chua's book, "Hymn of the Tiger Mother," was about the values of Chinese parenting.
Of course, when Chua said Chinese parenting, she should have said Asian instead, because her painful descriptions of her daughters not being allowed to participate in school plays and sleepovers, of her calling them 'garbage,' rang true with parents that I know who, while not Chinese, are definitely traditionally Asian.
I have previously stated that I love my parents. My overbearing, sometimes contradictory, ambitious, optimistic, maddeningly traditionally Asian parents. Yet while I admire their resilience in raising four girls, in a land where both of them spoke stunted English and worked minimum-wage jobs, I also see their flaws. That's one of the amazing things that comes with age and not living at home.
