“The Tiger Mom’s Tale” - Lyn Liao Butler

 🐅 If intergenerational family drama is something you enjoy - on paper, of course - I unreservedly recommend grabbing this one. 

🐅 Butler tells the story from the POV of Lexa Thomas, a biracial Taiwanese-American charting a successful life in NYC. Her American family is comprised of her mom Susan who comes out to Lexa in the opening scene, Lexa’s half-sister Maddie, and her incredibly supportive step-father Craig. Despite all of the love that surrounds her, we get a sense of the disconnect she feels as her white family doesn’t completely understand (though not for lack of trying) the complexities of her biracial identity, particularly when Lexa is very estranged from her Taiwanese family following a very dramatic and sudden fracture when she was a teenager.

🐅 Three-fourths of the novel is a build up to the Tiger Mom’s tale. Pin-Yen is Lexa’s birth father’s wife. Her tale is not offered as a justification for her actions, but I think it is meant to open a window of understanding. Elements throughout ATMT include standing up for oneself and facing conflict head on, reclaiming identity, and forgiveness. Lexa must decide if she’s willing to hear out the tale when Pin-Yen finally makes a full confession. Perhaps the truth can bring Lexa the peace of confirming that Pin-Yen’s wrath had always been misplaced.

My thoughts on the story told to us by Pin-Yen are complicated. She behaves heinously toward Lexa. No question. She firmly believes that she is the aggrieved party and that she is averting injustice on behalf of Lexa’s Taiwanese half-sister, Hsu-Ling. Her actions are borne of a desperation so deep as to obscure any sense of ethics. 

Hsu-Ling was born with a disability, is not intellectually brilliant or interested in the sciences, and is not traditionally beautiful by Taiwanese standards (per the Tiger Mom). This all fits within a “tiger mom narrative” - the immense pressure placed on children to succeed in very specifically outlined ways. So we see that her sense of being victimized is compounded by feelings of inadequacy. We also learn that Pin-Yen blames herself for Hsu-Ling’s disability. So all in all, a cauldron of seething resentments bubbling over into a betrayal of Lexa, and eventually, an unravelling of Pin-Yen’s relationship with Hsu-Ling as well.

🐅 Lexa faces the all too familiar quandary of not belonging enough in Taiwan, yet sticking out for being Asian in the US. Colorism and the cultural treatment of disability are also key themes. Lexa’s European features are prized in Taiwan, and it may explain why some of her extended family eagerly embraced her though she was an illegitimate child.

🐅 All in all, TTMT is a fantastic read. If the family secrets and betrayal don’t get you, the Taiwanese food scene will!