Tiger Mom vs Joy Luck Club

In The Joy Luck Club, we see many similarities and differences between the relationships of the mothers and daughters (specifically, “The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates” section) of the book and the relationship Amy Chua has with her kids in real life. Amy Chua enforces a strict set of rules she has for her children that she thinks a majority of Asian parents also share. The rules Amy Chua has as expectations for her children include: being the number one student in every subject, get A’s and nothing but A’s, not attend sleep overs or having play dates, and not being able to choose their own extra curricular activities. In some ways, the stories in The Joy Luck Club, we see Amy Tan reincorporating Amy Chua’s guidelines on how to raise Asian children in the mother and daughter relationships of one particular story called “Two Kinds”. Here is a quote from the "Tiger Mom" article by Amy Chau:

"A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it."

In the story, “Two Kinds”, Jing-mei’s mother is ashamed of her daughter, Jing-mei. Her mother has always wanted her daughter to be a prodigy. It didn’t matter what kind of prodigy she was to become, as long as she became real good at something, it was okay. Her mother became especially agitated after she had enough of the bragging that Waverly’s mother would do about her daughter being the amazing chess player she is in the whole city. But through out the story, Jing-mei’s mother believed that she would eventually sprout out of her shell and find that hidden talent within her. That’s when her mother saw a show showing an amazing kid piano player and believed Jing-mei can do the same and began to send Jing-mei to piano lessons.

I picked this particular story because one of the guidlines Amy Chau had in her article was to not let her children play any instrument besides the violin and piano. Well, in “Two Kinds”, Jing-mei is eventually forced into playing the piano (just like Amy Chau gives her children the piano and violin as the only options of instruments to play). So yes, I do think that Amy Chau’s article is endorsed by The Joy Luck Club in many ways and I predict that many stories along the way of the book will do the same.