Amy Chua, everyone’s favorite “Tiger Mom,” has received nothing but backlash upon the publication of her newest book, The Triple Package — and rightfully so.
The Chinese American law professor outdid herself with yet another controversial work — one in which she acknowledges that some races are superior than others. Online publications and morning talk shows have acknowledged Chua’s blatant racism, and Facebook friends have posted links to articles with captions like “WTF is she thinking?!”
But few have delved into the book itself and emerged with other various reasons why The Triple Package — and Chua, for that matter — is problematic. Huffington Post writer and author Jie-Song Zhang took to his blog in a post titled “Tiger Mom vs. Brooklyn Dragon: I Hereby Challenge Amy Chua to a Barefist Kung Fu Duel.”
“Tell me how you want it, Chua,” Zhang writes. “We could match fists across the rooftops of a small rural village, the shadow outlines of our battle poses stitched across the cold black fabric of night…We could get down in Chinatown at the corner of Mott and Bayard, with a gathered crowd of elderly Chinese men, all of them squatting and smoking cigarettes as they watch us. Whatever you want to do.”
Zhang writes that by penning controversial statements in regards to Chinese superiority as a public figure, Chua is only increasing anti-Chinese, and therefore, anti-Asian sentiment. It’s not Chua everyone will end up criticizing, but all Asian Americans. As if there wasn’t already a wedge driven between American communities.
As for her book, Zhang criticizes the standards by which Chua measures the value of communities — through income and test scores — calling it “simple-minded.”
“…our nation, and the world, might come to intuitively understand that it can only be in the recognition of our great common cause, in the joining together of our individual strengths, and in the sharing of our collective responsibilities that we will pass through honorably to the next stage of humankind,” Zhang concludes.
