Articles of the hot and humid day

-Apparently that thing I'd always had a sneaking suspicion about - that making it in the writing world is easier if your friends happen to be writers - is true.

-I think the technical, journalistic classification for the following link is wut.

-The scientist village where I live is not open to the public, I think, who knows. But there are always tourists coming by to look at it, photograph it, and... I can't quite figure out what they hope to see. Einstein doesn't work here anymore. The scholars who do are on their computers or at their notebooks in their offices. There's nothing to see, and tourists aren't allowed inside the buildings to see it. That doesn't stop them from trying. Sometimes, walking my dog in the area, I feel as if I'm part of some kind of real-life Big Bang Theory fantasy tour, in which I play the disheveled brunette Penny.

But that's nothing! As Shulem Deen explains, the Hasids of Williamsburg have become a tourist attraction. And the poor tourists are disappointed when the anthropological exhibition they've come to observe fails to greet them with the appropriate small-town friendliness. As Deen notes, the tourist whining about this happens to be a middle-aged man, who was trying to make eye contact with women and, more disturbingly, little girls. That they were squicked out and avoided him seems very much unrelated to their being Hasids, and very much about them being sensible female city-dwellers. Deen also notes that there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the Hasidic community, but that the failure of their eight-year-old girls to smile at male tourists isn't one of them.

In reluctant defense of (reading the book of) Amy Chua

PG and I have, like everyone else, been having a debate about Amy Chua's book. Since neither of us has read it (in its entirety, at least), I was beginning to think we'd discussed it from almost every possible other angle, and thus reached a dead end.

Not so! Yesterday I listened to the Slate Audio Book Club on Chua (which, incidentally, I recommend to even those considering reading the book - it's not as if there are "spoilers" at this point - but which made me more curious to read the book), and judging by the response of some intelligent people who apparently read it cover to cover... PG and I were both right. One of the participants said the coverage misses the third half (UPDATE not half, part - thanks for noticing this to my own mother, yes I catch the irony given the topic of this post) of the book, and they all agreed that the buzz =/= what's actually in the book. Points for PG. However, one (possibly the same) participant also pointed out that the way she can tell that the people holding forth on the book haven't read it is that they actually leave out some of the more outrageous things in it (the relationship with the permissive Jewish relatives, esp mother-in-law, apparently). Rather than making just them more sympathetic to Chua, reading the whole darn thing made the participants unsympathetic in new ways as well. And it doesn't appear that consuming the this-is-not-a-parenting-guide disclaimer, or the entire "narrative arc" culminating in an I-was-wrong, makes a reader not take away from the book that they should maybe question their own lax parenting style. (One participant mentions making her son practice the drums longer, and taking a more active role in her son's - another son's? - swimming lessons.) But at least someone at Slate thinks the book was a success as a memoir (they all agree it's a memoir), so PG, you win this round. If I were pre-enlightenment Amy Chua's daughter, I'd be punished accordingly for taking second place.

What I thought was most compelling in the podcast, that hasn't come up much in the discussion overall, was the question of what it means for someone who's essentially a mainstream, high-achieving, well-connected, elite American to adopt what is essentially an immigrant attitude to parenting. In other words, that this isn't a memoir about immigrant parenting or elite parenting, but about the unusual choice of elite parents (or one elite mother, if only for a time) to create an artificial sense for their children that the world will end if they don't get all A's. This interests me on a personal level both as someone raised in a family that's perpetuated some "immigrant" ways (though nothing as out-there as the WSJ excerpt) well beyond any actual immigrant generation, and as someone who for entirely particular reasons rarely experiences a moment of bourgeois everything-will-be-OK. (Yes, I opted for humanities grad school, but when I started, it was with plans B, C, and D in the back of my mind, never anything about how I could take some time off to find myself if it didn't work out.)

On a general level, though, what matters is the question of regression to the mean, something I alluded to in my first post on this, but that seemed more central after hearing the Slate folks discuss. One of the participants phrased it as, Chua didn't need to go the immigrant-parent route, because her children already had all the privileges that come with being the children of two Yale law profs/public intellectuals, in a milieu of immense intellectual and not insubstantial material advantage. But that's not how it works! Privilege of this nature does not guarantee one's children will be successful, only that if they're not, this is highly embarrassing for everyone involved - the parents who believe in meritocracy who must now confront that their children are not so great after all, and the children who've been schooled in how unjust of a society we're living in, who know they have it good, and who've still failed to make anything of themselves. If Chua hadn't cracked the metaphorical whip (or literal? why I do need to read the thing...) maybe her daughters would be trying to find creative ways not to let on how successful their parents were, so as not to attract unfavorable comparisons.

The draw of the book, then, is precisely the fact that even the most successful "Western" parents can't rely on good schools and their general educatedness if they want their children doing at least as well as they did. That it is the end of the world, in its way, if generation after generation slides in the US News and World Report ranking of its alma mater. Chua's originality is in finding a way to address this that isn't coming out and saying, damned if my kid doesn't go to Harvard. No, it's about having a work ethic, about things that are only fun when you've worked at them, about honoring immigrant forbearers or Asian traditions or who knows. Whatever it is, it's not crass, it's not about brand names. She's offering an alternative to the multiple-intelligences, well-roundedness excuses parents give (and provide themselves) for their kids' academic mediocrity, a respectable way to subtly make sure your children don't go to their safety schools. She's telling them not necessarily that it's possible to make every child an academic success, but that it's OK to care not only if one's child is happy, but if the family's place in a certain elite is secure for one more generation.

Judging a book by its coverage UPDATED

This afternoon, cheapness demanded that I return a 25-euro water-heater to Monoprix, then go a few blocks out of my way to Carrefour, where store-brand seltzer is cheaper than Badoit, the best option at Franprix. Accompanying me on this journey was none other than Amy Chua* - her interview on the Leonard Lopate show, that is. And, having heard her speak for herself, I must say I'm... a whole lot less sympathetic than I was after reading the WSJ excerpt. (Before proceeding, I should ask PG, does Chua claim this interview was also unfairly edited?)

Anyway. In the interview, Chua refers to her book - her own book - as both "complex" and "funny." These are not claims one is allowed to make about one's own writing. One can say a book was intended as humorous. Not that it is funny, but that some readers just don't get it. She also said it's about how her then-13-year-old daughter taught her "humility." Hmm.

Yes, the message comes across that didn't in the WSJ, that the book is a memoir and not a parenting guide, and that she learns at the end... not exactly that the "Chinese" method is wrong (and indeed, she quite vehemently defends the most outrageous WSJ-excerpted examples in the interview), but that it's not perfect. The nuance, lesson-learned angle feels artificial, externally or editorially imposed, and not consistent with what Chua really believes, which is perhaps (if the book in its entirety is what Chua said it is in this interview, and no I'm not having it shipped to me in France to find out) why the WSJ chose to ignore that bit. She seems to want it both ways - to admonish the parents of "Western" brats, while claiming to have written a book that does no such thing.

It gets more confusing. After she'd explained that "Chinese" means "immigrant," Lopate mentions that he lived for a long time in NY's Chinatown - a Chinese and immigrant neighborhood, if the name wasn't enough of a giveaway - and that the "Western" plagues of teen pregnancy and drug abuse were plenty common. At which point, more clarification: the "immigrants" she refers to are those who come to the US as graduate students or skilled workers. Well, in that case. Of course such individuals would be high-achieving themselves, and produce above-average achieving offspring. (I'm tempted to suggest to my boyfriend's mother that she write a parenting memoir about how to produce an astrophysicist, the Flemish way. With recipes, for sure, because good food is part of it, and because that would probably sell more books.)

But if this story continues to fascinate me, it's not because of the parenting angle, but because of the questions it poses about the control an author should have over a book's reception, particularly if that book is a memoir. If this interview I just listened to made me less sympathetic, less sympathetic to what? The book? Chua-as-a-person? The phenomenon, I suppose...

With books generally, does an author have the right (right as in reasonable expectation, not First Amendment) to expect all who judge to have read the thing? As a rule, yes - thus the whole thing about not judging books by their covers - but does this change if the author has publicized it like crazy, published an excerpt as an article, taken high-profile interviews, and otherwise made sure that those who haven't read the book have plenty of material to work with? Hype may sell books, but taken to a certain level, it absolves would-be readers of the responsibility for having consumed any one particular text of the many claiming to represent the phenomenon.

And, more specifically, do memoirists have the right to ask that their fans take what they say as truth, but that their detractors not judge them as people for what is, after all, only a sliver - and an externally-edited one at that - of their true selves? Believing it's "real," the true account of a real human being, is fine and well when the response is favorable, but feels mean-spirited if unfavorable. How dare anyone - readers of the excerpt, the book, or any other installment of this multimedia extravaganza - judge Chua as a person? This phenomenon is especially true of the online overshare, but in an age when comments sections can overflow with what are ostensibly responses to a memoir, the line is blurry.

*I realize that everything anyone writes about Chua as of a week ago is "the last thing" they have to say on something that's already "so yesterday." But the discussion continues, who are we kidding? Not over till it's over.

UPDATE

I think there's a new First World Problem come out of this: Life is so tough, my Style-Section-ready upper-middle-class Ivy-league-seal-of-approval lifestyle book is so popular that people won't stop talking about it and buying copies.

Amy Chua Amy Chua Amy Chua UPDATED

The NYT is on the case. Judith Warner, Room for Debate, Motherlode, Fashion & Style. This woman, who will teach you how to raise show poodles, is everywhere. This is her moment! How kind of her to agree, "between what she called a '24/7' effort to 'clarify some misunderstandings,'" to give a phone interview to the Times. As though that wasn't a key part of said effort. Anyway.

I have not, I confess, combed through all of this. Doing so - comments included! - will be my reward for getting through a substantial to-do list after arriving in Paris. But I did appreciate this, from Warner: "simply by marrying a Jew, and not a Chinese man, she [Amy Chua, remember her?] worries that she is 'letting down 4,000 years of civilization.'"

Given how much emphasis many American Jews place on intermarriage as a Jewish issue, as though Jews are the only ones whose culture is worth honoring, and as though any non-Jewish partner is by definition a hearty Protestant Nebraskan or a New England WASP, or at any rate, an unhyphenated American, because really, isn't the world divided between Jews and the whites who inspire Ralph Lauren?, it's amusing to be presented with the other side of a scenario that we all know exists: minority-minority intermarriage.

UPDATE

How is an American Jewish mother that much more "Western" than an Asian-American one? I had more thoughts on this before a heck of a trip, and so will maybe muse on this later, but didn't intend to take the post down, just to update.

"They said they were sending over an Asian woman"

Amy Chua's article about "Chinese" parenting - aka immigrant parenting, aka Jewish parenting, aka none of that wishy-washy multiple-intelligences, I-just-want-you-to-be-happy nonsense - is the buzz of the day. (Miss Self-Important, among others, beat me to it. But I had to go out for a sugar brioche before finishing this post. I'm a fourth-generation American, I have my priorities.) 

Mostly, the novelty of the piece is that we're accustomed to this cliché being torn apart - as MSI notes, we can anticipate a not-all-Chinese-are-the-same reaction. And here's a real Asian-American perpetuating the stereotype! To Chua's credit, she explains that by "Chinese" she means a certain parenting style by no means exclusive to Chinese or even Asian parents.

But even if we accept that there are different parenting styles in different cultures, there are a few confusing elements in the piece. One is that Chua speaks as though she raised her children the Chinese way, yet mentions a "Western" husband. Is part of Chinese parenting treating the non-Chinese parent like a child, thus ignoring his wishes in terms of how to raise the kids? Another, which Isabel Archer points out, is that "Chinese parents," according to Chua, do not permit their children to act in school plays. Why would this, of all endeavors, be deemed a waste of time? Jewish parents - or, really, "Jewish parents," - classically tell their kids not to be on sports teams. While this is counterproductive in a world of "holistic" college admissions, it's at least consistent with the notion of academic success before all else, whereas further exposure to literature and memorization couldn't hurt. I suspect, however, that the theater thing is particular to the author. Finally, there's this: "Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, 'Hey fatty—lose some weight.'" One might react to this in the Jezebel manner, in horror, but Chua's point is that Chinese parents don't care about self-esteem. Fair enough, but it's legitimate to ask why it matters if the A student - male or female - is overweight. The girl's not allowed to date anyway, and is not on her way to becoming an actress. Is it that heft is a sign of Westernness, of assimilation, of having cut class to go to McDonalds?  

My authoritah here comes from a) my own upbringing, which had elements of "Western" and "Chinese" traditions, and b) my having gone to a high school - the high school - where the successful children of "Chinese parents" end up. On the one hand, the fact that there were (and are, but I was class of 2001 and speak anecdotally) so many Asian and Asian-American students at Stuyvesant in the first place meant the parents were doing something right. On the other, at a school so heavily Asian and Jewish, the B-and-below students were Asian and Jewish. The potheads, or the kids whose smoking may not have extended beyond tobacco but who at any rate cut class to hang around outside: also the offspring of "Chinese parents." The slackers, as well as the just mediocre, were the product of families that would, if Chua is to be believed, accept nothing less than an A. It could be that even the "worst" of these kids ended up better off than the average NYC students. But the article left the impression that your child, too, can be permanently obedient, permanently valedictorian. As MSI puts it, "The real question is, how did Amy Chua get her children to obey?"

Point being, the "Chinese" method makes for a lot of good little 10-year-olds, but guarantees little once mainstream culture becomes readily accessible. Where Portnoy went nuts with the "shiksas," consider a "Chinese-parented" classmate of mine who apparently arrived at math camp only to discover that the dorm had a TV and to park herself in front of that long-forbidden fruit. This is, in other words, a parenting style that only works in a very particular situation. If everyone's "Chinese," someone has to be the B- student. Meanwhile, even if the obedient behavior sticks and the kid gets into a good college, a given family can only stay "Chinese" for so many generations. 

Meanwhile, in the towns and villages of America and beyond, just as some kids randomly turn out to be gay, others randomly turn out to be incredible students. Not children of neglect, but not children raised to excel at all costs, whose success isn't tied to obedience. In cities and suburbs, well-connected parents manage to pass their careers down to the next generation, keeping out the "Chinese." Parents can only do so much. 

This isn't to say they shouldn't try, and I do think that in America, too much emphasis is placed on the 'A' as the result of innate intelligence and thus not worth working for. Chua has a point here: "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences." Some children do want to work - remember Saffy and Edina? - but this strikes me as true as a rule.

My question, then, is about what results Chua promises, and to what end. Non-bratty children? That much seems doable. Children capable of supporting themselves as adults? B-students, too, manage just fine. Superstar geniuses? Unlikely. But is the point social mobility? Probably not, because unless they're actually struggling immigrants (less likely to read articles like this one), or single mothers prior to women entering the professions (not likely to exist in the US in 2011), the parents who'd parent in this way would have already reached professional heights themselves. So is it just about not letting one's own children regress to the mean? If so, I see how there'd be an audience, but it hardly seems a cause we as a society should support - why not let the mediocre children of the high-achieving fall behind and leave spots for the high-achieving children of the mediocre? The only way it kind of makes sense is from an international-competition angle. American parents, man up! Because "Western" is really "American" - Western Europeans are not, to my knowledge, exposed to the culture of holistic self-esteem.