Tiger Babies Strike Back

Dedication

Part 1: Here's Where the Fun Begins

Part 2: Peek Behind the Curtain

Part 3: Breaking Out of the Locked Chinese Box

Part 4: Emerging from the Shadows and into the Light

Part 5: Older and Wiser

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

For Lucy

1

We are the survivors of the tap dance brigade, Chinese school, and interminable piano lessons. We are frustrated by our parents and spending a small fortune on therapy. My Chinese auntie once told me that if I wasn't driving a Mercedes-Benz by the time I turned thirty years old, I'd be a total loser. And even though I'd gotten straight As my whole life, earned a bachelor's degree with a double major at UC Berkeley in four years, worked a full-time job while my husband was in graduate school, wrote three novels before I turned thirty-eight, and am raising one great kid, do you know what my mother thinks of me? She thinks I am lazy.

I am writing this book because I've just returned from vacation with my parents, and the only way I could stand the bickering, silent criticism, and their tiger
vibe
was to sit still in the backseat and pretend I was dead. I pretended I was DEAD. I sat there and visualized myself floating just outside the car window, out there on the California landscape, floating like a ghost, or a harrier, and tried to find peaceful death while Johnny Mathis crooned on the CD player.

Why? Because this is what happens when you are raised by a Tiger Mother. You get a liberal arts education and use it against her. The
New York Times
speculates that the study of the humanities is obsolete on college campuses. Oh, no. You need the arsenal of history and literature behind you if you're going to take on a Machiavellian Tiger Mom.

For survivors of a Chinese upbringing, turnabout is fair play. The culture of my ancestors made me obedient up to a point, but then my American side couldn't help but want to blow stuff up. I was forced into a life of high academics, Chinese school, and rote memorization of the Five Chinese Classics, but I didn't learn a thing. Well, except how to sneak out at night and have dirty fun somewhere else, away from the watchful eyes of my control-freaky Tiger Parents.

The history of Chinese in America consists of railroad building, tunnel excavating, and gold mining. But that is the story predominantly of Chinese men. Meanwhile, we girls were drowned in wells or sold for a few dollars by our very own parents who didn't seem to care that we'd be auctioned to the highest bidder in the Gold Mountain of San Francisco.

But now we're doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. Nonetheless, no matter how different our personalities or professions are these days, it seems that all anyone wants to know is if we are Tiger Moms. And is it just me, or does the world only want to hear from a woman if she has been deemed
hot
? We've come a long way, baby! From concubines to MILFs in one century.

What does go on inside the Chinese American mind? We'd better start thinking about it before China takes over the whole world with insane pollution, supertall basketball hunkies, and fake Ming vases selling for millions. Oh, and don't forget that all the little hooks that make up every bra, from Warner's to La Perla, are made in China. American breasts depend on China. Your rack depends on China. And hence, the world depends on understanding us, Chinese American women. We are more than a design on someone's biceps. Our individuality is a chink in the armor of one of the world's largest economies.

We have an interior life that no one can touch. We rule ourselves behind a yellow screen, like the empress dowager ruling China behind a transparent scrim. The world still sees Suzie Wong, but we are many faces at once. We are simultaneously the forgotten girl in the well, an adorable adopted baby, the queen of the Western Palace, the Tiger Mom, the sexy siren, or dominatrix doormat in men's minds, and all the while dutiful daughters, good girls, and faceless sewing women.

Why does a Tiger Mother feel like she has to be one? Maybe because there's an emotional aspect to Chinese American history that our organs are steeped in, like strong tea, but this vital part of our existence goes unexamined and unrecognized. We are the original
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
, but the tattoo is on our hearts, stitched with an embroidery needle in the forbidden stitch.

Our mothers have raised kids who are more American than Chinese, and we want to lob a Molotov cocktail into the family courtyard so it rolls into the red chamber. Praise Asian nerds and raise the red lantern to comic book geeks, Goth girls, and Ph.D.s who hate Hello Kitty. Our Chinese parents sent us to college, unwittingly giving us the tools to dismantle the family home, brick by brick, wall by wall, just like the old neighborhoods in Beijing that are being demolished, sold piece by piece as antiques, relics of an old way, auctioned off for the highest dollar. We teach our elders how to get on Facebook, and then we unfriend them.

Please allow me to pull back a velvet curtain and show you what an American of Chinese descent really thinks about daily life, motherhood, and navigating the world's misperceptions. I will hold up this viewfinder just for you, and if you can't decipher some of the Mandarin or Cantonese subtitles, I am happy to be your American translator.

2

If William Blake were alive today and writing parenting books, he might rework the beginning of his famous poem as, “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the
midlife crisis
of the night . . .”