Twenty Six Malignant Gates

In "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates", the second section of four stories in The Joy Luck Club, the relationships between the mothers and daughters in America are very similar to Amy Chua's Tiger Mom article we read in class a few weeks ago. In Chua's article, she describes how she forces her child to learn the piano and learn the piece until she knew it and perfected the piece. In The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei's mother forces her to take piano lessons because she wants her child to become a prodigy.   

The difference between the two situations are that Jing-Mei's mother wanted her daughter to be a prodigy because she wanted her daughter to be able to compare with Waverly Jong, who was a national chess winner at a very young age. Jing-Mei's mother wanted Jing- Mei to be able to beat Waverly and her mother in a contest of who's daughter is better than the other. In the Tiger Mother article, Chua's intentions was to get her daughter to be able to perfect this piece on the piano.

"Over the next year, I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both talking in a loud bragging tone of voice so other would hear." (138) 

      Jing -Mei's mother may seem demanding and mean, but really her underlying intentions are to give Jing-Mei a goal to become someone and Waverly was just a benchmark for Jing-Mei for how good her mother wanted her to be. Chua knew that her daughter could do it and can do the piano piece without any flaws and thats why she forced her daughter to sit down and just play and practice. Both mothers had the intentions to help their children see their potential and to reach. Both mothers didn't mean to be mean or to make their daughters feel bad, but they expected their children to live to the best of their abilities. To get them to reach their potentials the mothers believe that they need to push their daughters to get somewhere.