Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T19:20:19.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tiger Mother as Ethnopreneur: Amy Chua and the Cultural Politics of Chineseness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2015

Caroline S. Hau
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Amy Chua catapulted to fame in the United States with the publication of her bestselling World on Fire: How Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2002) and a much-discussed Wall Street Journal excerpt from her next book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). A wry account of a ‘Chinese’ mother's efforts, not all successful, to raise her two daughters to be high-achievers, Tiger Mother created some controversy owing to its critique of ‘Western’-style parenting and its perceived advocacy of a ‘Tiger Mother’ brand of parenting that drew on the author's own experience of being raised by Chinese-Filipino immigrant parents in America. Not only did Battle Hymn generate heated discussion in America about the stereotyping of Asian-Americans as ‘model minority’; it also tapped into American anxieties about the waning of U.S. power in the wake of a rising China, while provoking spirited responses from mainland Chinese women looking to raise their children in ‘enlightened’ ways. This article follows Amy Chua's career as an ‘ethnopreneur’ who capitalises on her claims of ‘Chineseness’ and access to ‘Chinese culture.’ Drawing on localised/provincialised, regional, and family-mediated notions of Chineseness, Chua exemplifies the ‘Anglo-Chinese’ who exploits – and profits from – national and cultural differences within nations as well as among Southeast Asia, the U.S., and China in order to promote particular forms of hybridised (trans)national identities while eschewing the idea of mainland China as the ultimate cultural arbiter of Chineseness.

Keywords

Chinesenesscultural entrepreneurAnglo-Chineserise of Chinamodel minority
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 3 , Special Issue 2: Bequeathing Families , July 2015 , pp. 213 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Institute of East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Babytree.com. 2013. China's Babytree.com surpassed U.S.-based Babycenter.com to become world's No. 1 pregnancy and parenting website. Press release. Yahoo! Finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-babytree-com-surpassed-u-025800218.html (accessed on 30 May 2013).Google Scholar
Brooks, David. 2011. Amy Chua is a wimp. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 19 January. Available at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11019/1118865-109.stm#ixzz1Kmo3fSYg (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Chae, Youngsuk. 2008. Politicizing Asian American Literature: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chafe, William H. 1975. The American Woman: Her Changing Sociological, Economic, and Political Roles 1920–1970. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chi, Frank. 2011. Amy Chua: Manipulating childhood traumas and Asian-American stereotypes to sell a book. Boston.com 16 January. Available at: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2011/01/amy_chua_manipu.html (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Chin, Frank, Chan, Jeffrey Paul, Inada, Lawson Fusao, and Wong, Shawn (eds.). 1991. The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. New York: Plume.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. 2009. Foreword. In Ho, Elaine Yee Lin and Kuehn, Julia (eds.), China Abroad: Travel, Spaces, Subjects, pp. ix–xii. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Chu, Priscilla Pue Ho. 2011. Why Tiger Mothers are superior. Wall Street Journal, 8 January. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html (accessed on 2 June 2011).Google Scholar
Chua, Amy. 2002. World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Chua, Amy. 2011. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Chua, Amy and Rubenfeld, Jed. 2014. The Triple Package: What Really Determines Success. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John L. and Comaroff, Jean. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
The Daily Beast. 2011. The “Chinese Mom” backlash. Reprinted in Newsweek, 18 January. Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/18/the-chinese-mom-backlash.html (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Davila, Arlene M. 2001. Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
DeHart, Monica Christine. 2010. Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Identity and Development Politics in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dillon, Sam. 2010. In PISA test, top scores from Shanghai stun educators. New York Times 7 December. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed on 25 December 2010).Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron. 1979. The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. 1997. Critical reflections on “Chinese capitalism” as paradigm. Identities 3(3), 303–330.Google Scholar
Duus, Peter, Myers, Ramon H., and Peattie, Mark (eds.) 1989. The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ghemawat, Pankaj. 2011. World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Gomez, Terence and Michael Hsiao, Hsin-Huang (eds.). 2004. Chinese Business in Southeast Asia: Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, Susan. 1985. Sexual stratification: The other side of “growth with equity” in East Asia. Population and Development Review 11 (2), 265–314.Google Scholar
Grijns, Mies, Ines Smyth, Anita Van Velzen, Machud, Sugiah and Sayogyo, Pudjiwati (eds.). 1994. Different Women, Different Work: Gender and Industrialization in Indonesia. Aldershot: Avebury.Google Scholar
Hau, Caroline S. 2012. Becoming “Chinese” in Southeast Asia. In Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.), Sinicization and the Rise of China: Civilizational Processes beyond East and West, pp. 175–206. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hau, Caroline S. 2014. The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation and Region in and Beyond the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Huggan, Graham. 2001. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ruper. 1996. Merchant Princes of the East: Cultural Delusions, Economic Success and the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Huang Hung. 2011. The Beijing backlash over crazy Chinese moms. The Daily Beast, 15 January. Available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/15/why-chinese-moms-act-crazy.html. (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Huang, Quanyu. 2014. The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids. New York: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Kee Hua Chee. 2010. Life in the Feng Shui lane. The Star 16 January. Available at: http://www.lillian-too.com/news_thestarjan10.php (accessed on 2 June 2011).Google Scholar
Kingston, Anne. 2011. Amy Chua on high-stakes parenting. Maclean's USA, 13 January. Available at: http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/13/amy-chua-on-high-stakes-parenting/ (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. 2013. Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream. New York Times, 4 June. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/opinion/global/xi-jinpings-chinese-dream.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& (accessed on 21 January 2014).Google Scholar
Laurence, Charles. 2011. “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua creates parenting storm. The First Post 19 January. Available at: ttp://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/73906,news-comment,news-politics,tiger-mother-amy-chua-creates-parenting-storm (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Licuanan, Victoria S. (ed). 1992. Women Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. Manila: Asian Institute of Management.Google Scholar
Licuanan, Victoria S. 1995. Breaking Barriers: Businesswomen of Southeast Asia. Manila: Asian Institute of Management.Google Scholar
Lin, Jan. 1998. Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclaves and Global Change. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Loh, Sandra Tsing. 2014. “Secrets of Success: ‘The Hybrid Tiger’ and ‘The Triple Package.’” New York Times Sunday Book Review, 31 January: Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/books/review/the-hybrid-tiger-and-the-triple-package.html?_r=0 (accessed on 2 February 2014).Google Scholar
Mannur, Anita. 2005. “Peeking ducks” and “food pornographers”: Commodifying culinary Chinese Americanness. In Khoo, Tseen and Louie, Kam (eds.), Culture, Commodity, Identity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English, pp. 19–38. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Murray, Charles. 2011. Amy Chua bludgeons entire generation of sensitive parents, bless her. AEIdeas: The Public Policy Blog of the American Enterprise Institute, 12 January. Available at: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2011/01/amy-chua-bludgeons-entire-generation-of-sensitive-parents-bless-her/ (accessed on 20 June 2011).Google Scholar
Nelson, Sara. 2011. Do Asian mothers know best? An interview with Amy Chua. Do Chinese parents know the secret to raising high-achieving kids? The Oprah Magazine, 14 January. Available at: http://www.oprah.com/relationships/An-Interview-with-Amy-Chua-Battle-Hymn-of-the-Tiger-Mother (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Newton, Pauline T. (ed.). 2005. Interview B. “Cultural roots” vs. “cultural rot”: An interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim, September 29, 2000. Transcultural Women of Late-Twentieth-Century U.S. American Literature: First-Generation Migrants from Islands and Peninsulas, pp. 165–71. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.Google Scholar
Nonini, Donald. 2005. Toward a (proper) postwar history of Southeast Asian petty capitalism: Predation, the state, and Chinese small business capital in Malaysia. In Smart, Alan and Smart, Josephine (eds.), Petty Capitalists and Globalization: Flexibility, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development, pp. 167–200. Albany: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, USA: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa and Nonini, Donald M. (eds.). 1997. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Phongpaichit, Pasuk and Baker, Chris. 1996. Thailand's Boom! Bangkok: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Paul, Pamela. 2008. Parenting Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Picard, Michel and Wood, Robert E., ed. 2007. Tourism, Ethnicity and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Review Ideas Market . 2011. The Tiger Mother responds to readers. 13 January. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/01/13/the-tiger-mother-responds-to-readers/ (accessed on 28 April 2011).Google Scholar
Rubenfeld, Jed. 2006. The Interpretation of Murder. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Sandberg, Sheryl. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Spencer, Kyle. 2013. Centers see new faces seeking test pre. New York Times 2 Apr.: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/nyregion/cram-schools-no-longer-just-an-asian-pursuit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed on 22 January 2014).Google Scholar
Szalai, Jennifer. 2014. Confessions of a Tiger Couple. New York Times Magazine 29 January. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/magazine/confessions-of-a-tiger-couple.html?_r=0 (accessed 1 February 2014).Google Scholar
Szanton Blanc, Cristina. 1997. The thoroughly modern ‘Asian’: Capital, culture and nation in Thailand and the Philippines. In Ong, Aihwa and Nonini, Donald M. (eds.), Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, pp. 261–86. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. 2011. Nationalistic and chasing the “Chinese Dream.” New York Times 12 January. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/asia/13iht-letter13.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed on 21 January 2014).Google Scholar
Teo, S.K. 1996. Women entrepreneurs of Singapore. In Low, A.M. and Tan, W.I. (eds.), Singapore Business Development Series: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, and Enterprising Culture, pp. 254–89. Singapore: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Thorniley, Tessa. 2010. Battle intensifies for $2Bn English-teaching business in China. Guardian Weekly, 13 July. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/13/china-english-schools (accessed on 5 March 2011).Google Scholar
Wang, Oliver. 2011. Notes of a Native Tiger Son, part 2. The Atlantic 20 January. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/01/notes-of-a-native-tiger-son-part-2/69923/ (accessed on 5 October 2013).Google Scholar
WantChina Times. 2011. Does Tiger Mother's China-style parenting threaten core US values? 26 January. Available at: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20110126000064&cid=1104 (accessed on 28 January 2011).Google Scholar
Xie, Philip Feifan. 2011. Authenticating Ethnic Tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications.Google Scholar
Yao, Souchou. 2002. Confucian Capitalism: Discourse, Practice and the Myth of Chinese Enterprise. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Young, Ken. 1999. Consumption, social differentiation and self-definition of the New rich in industrialising Southeast Asia. In Pinches, Michael (ed.), Culture and privilege in capitalist Asia, pp. 56–85. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zernike, Kate. 2011. Retreat of the “Tiger Mother.” New York Times, 16 January. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/fashion/16Cultural.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all (accessed on 8 April 2011).Google Scholar