Summary of “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” was written by Professor Amy Chua who is a Chinese mother of two. This article was published January 8th, 2011 in the Wall Street Journal. This article is mainly intended for what Chua refers to as “Western parents.” Amy Chua’s opinion is that these “Western” mothers fail at having successful children unlike Chinese mothers such as herself. According to Chua, Chinese mothers believe that if their child fails it is directed towards their parenting and that they have failed as a parent. Chua listed all the things she doesn’t allow her children to do, and she believes that it is correlated to how successful her children will be.
To make her point clear she uses a lot of pathos and a lot of examples from experiences with herself and her two daughters, Louisa and Sofia. At the beginning when she tells the stories about her daughters trying to fight back you think ’what a terrible mother’, but she uses this feeling to support the view the readers have on the Chinese mothers as being mean to their kids so that afterwards she can tell how it turned out good and therefor the way she raises her kids is the best. Amy Chua has a high ethos because she is a professor at Yale which is a very respected job, and as a parent it makes her more reliable because she tells the reader that her parents treated her the same way that she treats her daughters, and as we can see she has been very successful. Also she uses loghos: ”In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70 % of the Western mothers said either that ”stressing academic success is not good for children” or that ”parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun”. By contrast,
Amy Chua talks about the focus thats lately been on the Asian mothers about their way of being parents. “There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, indifferent people indifferent to their kids’ true interest.” This is a bad focus on Asian mothers, and together with the title, that makes the reason for the pause for the many western parents. It will definitely cause some anger that the asian mothers “relate” in the form of this article, and then it will draw them in and engage them in the debate, if they can disprove the article’s theories to themselves by disbelieving it. The author uses provocation to make the reader notice and be interested in the topic and make the readers relate to their own parenting. Once she has make the reader interested she engages them more by gaining their credibility by using herself as an example.
Kingston’s story “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” employs numerous fantasy elements in depicting her separation from the restrictiveness of China and further, her discovery of harmony between her ancient family’s culture and her new American one. Navigating through confusion and anger, Kingston is ultimately able to remove herself her Chinese bindings and find a sense of accord between her past and her future. Kingston’s rhetoric conveys her struggle with the complexities of her Chinese culture and her inability to come to a core truth. Furthermore, she gravitates toward American culture for its simplicity. Kingston is having difficulties sorting fact from fiction in her mother’s story about Moon Orchid’s encounter with her husband.
Yung asks herself “What sociohistorical forces were at play that can explain social change for Chinese American women in the first half of the twentieth century?” (Yung, 5) The book tells of their oppression in America through prostitution, gender roles, anti-Chinese immigration laws, and class discrimination. Also, she examines the rise of Christianity, the YWCA, The New Life Association, Chinese women’s role in the war, and support within Chinese communities in America. Yung states “the groundwork laid by our foremothers for a better life at home, in the workplace and in the larger society has not been lost on today’s generation of Chinese American women (Yung, 292). The title “Unbound Feet” is a perfect representation of Yung’s research on immigration and settling in The States. It represents the bound feet that Chinese women of high class had when arriving in America, to “ensure that women did not ‘wander’ too far outside the household gate” (Yung, 19).
Why Chinese Mothers are Superior There are numerous different ways to raise your child, and the “Western” parents often wonder how the Chinese can get so successful kids and in this article Amy Chua, who is a professor at Yale Law School and author of “Day of Empire” and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." explains how the difference in the Chinese and Western methods of raising your child. When I write Chinese- and Western parents it’s in a very loose way, just like Amy Chua writes in the article. Amy Chua has two girls, Louisa and Sophia, they live in New Haven. She comes with examples throughout the book on how she raised her two girls.
The people of China have been most influenced by Confucian ideas, and during the Han Dynasty Confucianism became part of the official education. Since Confucianism was being taught widespread it influenced the minds of the Chinese people enormously. Something the Confucian ideals taught was that women must hold a position that has less power than men, lowering the status of women. The only way a women could gain any type of respect was by birthing a son. It was taught that women should not have any type of rule and no one should care about a women’s ideas.
Through the conversation between Le and Ke, Le has developed her knowledge about China. The statement of Ke “Because they don’t affect you, here they affect all of us” provides Leah a new source of knowledge and understanding about China. It also destroys the distance between Leah and China. She starts to understand the political and historical about China. She is able to understand the reason that why the students making a protest because she also a student.
This is of course from a text about what is best called daoist philosophy: however this connection to attaining the dao from a source that seems to have informed some of the daoist religious’ schools of thought may be one of the things that lead to her exalted position inside the very patriarchal Chinese culture. Could Xi Wang Mu also have served as a kind of pressure valve? Perhaps having this great women in the west to look to served a need for women in china in order to give them some sense of self worth instead of their only worth coming from their relationship with the various men in their lives. Allowing for the image of a woman in power in the west may have helped women in their everyday lives deal with some of the stress of their position in society. She certainly was held in high regard by women.
The joy luck club by Amy Tan Analysis of the book The bond between a mother and daughter is very strong. It goes deeper than words can reach and continues beyond the grave. During life, however, it may not be at all comfortable; there may be battles and misunderstandings, impatience and anger. And if your mother was born in pre-Revolutionary China, and you were born in San Francisco in 1950, a child of two differing cultures, how do you explain your problems to her? How will she understand your feelings?