Book review: Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother

On the Menu: home made tomato soup with basil and fresh bread

I’m Reading: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

 

I don’t write that many book reviews – and certainly not fiction – because I know how hard writers work to get it right, and how devastating it can be when people tell you you’ve got it wrong.  But this book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, is a little different.  This got huge press a couple of months ago, with Chua claiming that the book was all about how ‘western mothers’ are raising lazy, unproductive kids while ‘Chinese mothers’ raise disciplined, ambitious children.

I actually agree that many parents – including, too often, me – are far too lax.  In the book’s excerpt in The Wall Street Journal and Chua’s many media appearances (I didn’t see any but I read about them), it seemed like it was all about school and learning.  I thought I could learn something from it – I believe that kids can do a lot more, both in terms of knowing stuff and in being creative, than many parents ask for.  And I was willing to learn how to ask.

But here’s my problem with the book.  It’s not about academics at all.  There’s maybe one minor example of how the mother pushed her two daughters to work harder in school.  All the rest of it is about music, and how she pushed them over and over to become the best possible pianist and violinist respectively.  Ultimately, this is just a story of a ‘stage Mom’ – or ‘tennis Dad,’ or ‘skater parent’ or whatever term you want to use.   There’s nothing Chinese about this – my American-born neighbor makes her 9-year-old daughter dance three hours a day and all day on Saturday, and fly out to California for TV show auditions.

There are two crucial pieces of evidence for this view, in addition to the fact that the book is all about the music and almost nothing about school.  (In fact, she took her daughters out of school, frequently, to practice their instruments.)  One is that, over and over again, she talks about how other parents asked her ‘how she did it,’ how she raised her kids to be such great musicians, and she waits, with baited breath, hoping they’ll ask more, so she can brag.  The other is that she doesn’t even want them to be professional musicians.  So how can this be, in any way, about preparing them for successful futures?

Ultimately, Amy Chua is little different from those parents who want their kids to be the next American Idol or the people who want to be on reality TV.  Since this is exactly the opposite of who I want to be, and the values I want to pass on to my children, this book really held no wisdom for me.

 

 

 

Journey to Somewhere

On the Menu: out for dinner

I’m reading: Possession, by A.S. Byatt

 

When I was in college and, later, grad school, all my friends and I said the same thing: we would raise our kids to experience all different religions.  However, here I am, Captain Zulu is now nine, yes, nine, and Ms Slinky is heading straight toward 6, and really, except for a couple of masses with my Mom or Mark’s Mom, and some sort of generic Christianity at the YMCA, they haven’t experienced anything.  A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor invited me to go to church with her and I thought, why not?  And while I was there, I thought: I will take the kids to a variety of churches/places of worship around the area, maybe one a month, and when we get to the end, see what we think.

I would not exactly characterize this as a spiritual journey, but I wouldn’t not, either.  I’m keeping an open mind, that’s all.

So this church, the Hope Community Church, is what people would probably call a mega-church.  It’s enormous, and going in, you feel almost like it’s more like a gym or a community center than a church.  There’s a huge church area with a choir and two levels of seating, downstairs and the balcony, there’s a cafe, a quiet area for reading, a place where you can sit to meet with a church person and talk about your life, an enormous children’s area with nursery, plus rooms for the older kids.  You can drop your kids off for the service and then pick them up afterwards.  Everything is computerized.

At first, I was going to sit in the cafe and read, but then I decided to go upstairs and listen to the service.  The first half was almost entirely singing.  The second half was the pastor, talking.  Perhaps I went the wrong week; his sermon seemed to be almost entirely about how people should get more involved in the church: emotionally, spiritually, service-wise, financially.  To be fair, every religious community has those kinds of talks, at least sometimes, so I didn’t hold it against him.  I did get turned off when he said, “the government can’t fix a pothole” and a number of people in the congregation cheered.  It occurred to me: maybe this isn’t the church for me.

As someone raised Catholic with extensive experience in Islam, one thing struck me very forcefully: there was almost no ritual involved in the service.  That is, I think, what people who become protestants – some of them anyway – like about it, but it didn’t feel like church to me.  It felt more like sitting around with some friends talking about church.  It also felt a little like those religious programs I’ve occasionally flipped through on TV.  Perhaps the singing at the beginning was a little bit ritualistic?  I don’t know.

Also, because the sermon was mostly about people getting involved, and not really about the church’s views per se, I’m not sure where it stands on theological issues.  They do have a whole ton of programs you can do to find that out, but I’m not intrigued enough to devote six Wednesday evenings in a row (or whatever it is) to finding out.   My neighbor is very ‘what it says in the Bible’ although not in a crazy sense, so this is probably not the first church I would have chosen to visit.

Coming Up: a Quaker meeting (at least that’s the plan)

 

 

 

 

Ubi-marketing: does it have to be this way?

On the menu: Pasta with grilled tuna

I’m reading: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

 

Sigh.  I quit Facebook a year or two ago, mostly because I felt like everyone on there was always trying to sell me something.  In the nicest possible way, of course.  And frequently things that I actually wanted.  But I just get so tired of being sold to.  And I can’t help but feel like it wasn’t always like this, like back in the day – even back in my day – it was possible to go places and do things and read stuff and think about things without it being just an indication of something else you might like to buy.  And sometimes it feels like all of Facebook – indeed, all of social media – is just a bunch of people waving their arms around and saying, hey, look at me.  There’s nothing wrong with that – sometimes being looked at is exactly what you want.  But it reminds me of the Princess thing.

When Ms Slinky was small(er), I didn’t want to buy her princess stuff.  It wasn’t that I had anything against princesses per se, just that it felt like princesses were completely crowding out the market, and that soon there would be nothing but princesses for everyone.  As it turned out, I worried needlessly: Ms Slinky likes princesses well enough, but she loves dinosaurs.  But this is my thing about being sold to all the time.  I just want there to be another state of being besides commercialism.

So I have decided to carve out this little corner of the internet and try to make a space for myself that isn’t being bought or sold.  A temple in the marketplace maybe.  Or just a little section of the garden with a chair and an umbrella and some red roses and a bit of really good sunscreen.  We’ll see how it goes.  Maybe all this is just my frustration that *I’m* a particularly bad seller, and the feeling that my writing career never took off because I didn’t relentlessly promote myself.  Or maybe I really mean it that I’m looking for satisfaction out of life, not success.

Let’s find out.

 

 

One More Thing

On the Menu: will it ruin my gourmet reputation to admit we had cheese and crackers?  it was really good cheese though…

I’m Reading: Re-reading Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy.  Again.

I need a hobby.  Not that I really have time for a hobbit – I mean, hobby.  (That really was an accidental slip!)  But the last time I kept a blog, there was a lot of whiny stuff in it about how long it was taking editors to answer my e-mail, and stories about my kids that were really only funny to me.  It would be so much better to keep a blog that follows the ups and downs of my pursuit of One Thing.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have time to take up a hobby, so maybe I’ll just make one up.  Hey, that’s a great idea.  I have to drive in to work tomorrow, that gives me thirty minutes there and thirty minutes back to invent a fascinating imaginary hobby that lots of other enthusiasts (or, perhaps, imaginary ones) will follow with great interest.  Ooh, I can even write my own comments, where the imaginary enthusiasts argue back and forth with each other over whether or not I’m successful at whatever imaginary thing I’m doing.

Or maybe I should just write another book.

Three things

On the Menu: beef curry with melanjan (betanjaan), channa, paratha

I’m Reading: I wish I was

I read somewhere that if you think of three good things that happened during the day before you’ll fall asleep, you’ll eventually be happier.  I can usually come up with the three things, but then I get distracted and start thinking about other things.  Usually worrying about things I have absolutely no control over, to be honest.

Today’s top three:

Chapter 7 on my historical novel

Making paratha in the kitchen with my daughter

My early morning walk

See?  It’s easy.