I Wish My Chinese Mother Screamed at Me More Often  This
weekend, I came across "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" by Amy
Chua. Since I have a Chinese mother, I assembled my face into a
self-righteous smirk and began to read. But—woe is me!—my
Chinese mother's a fraud.  For Amy Chua revealed that my Chinese
mother (maiden name: Lily Chua) failed her ethnicity by failing
to slave-drive me with the "screaming, hair-tearing explosions"
necessary for raising a superior child. Consequently, I am not a
math genius who performs open heart surgery and violin concertos
simultaneously, but a blogger who spends her days contemplating
Katy Perry's breasts. I learned arithmetic not by "every day
drilling," but the way every red-blooded American does, by
typing equations into my TI-86 during marathon sessions of
Drugwars. (Maybe I got the "sneaky Chinaman" gene instead of the
"obedient Chinese daughter" one?) And my mother and I never had
showdowns like this:   "The Little White Donkey," just like Amy
Chua's husband, a stu