Battle hymn of an aggravated reader

Endings are hard for us mere mortals. The end of a job. The end of a relationship. The end of summer.

It’s no different when it comes to writing. After wading four-fifths into a feature story about growing organic coffee in Brazil or a personal anecdote about how I hate my hair, I often find myself thinking, “Okay, you’ve come this far, now how the heck are you going to end this thing?”

In journalism, we call it a kicker — that last sentence of a news story or broadcast that ties it all together, leaving you with one last thought or sentiment. It’s like you’ve brushed, flossed, rinsed and spit. The kicker is what leaves the minty taste in your mouth. It’s the reader’s reward for sticking with a writer past the jump in a newspaper or magazine article or through all 225 pages of a novel.

It can make you smile, make you cry, make you think. Sometimes it leaves you wanting more. But in a good way. They’re hard to write. Even harder to write well. But that’s a writer’s job.

That’s why I was aggravated when I got to the last chapter of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Have you heard of this book? Sure you have, it’s all over the talk shows. The author, Amy Chua, even went on The Colbert Report to recount her memoir about trying to raise her two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, the “Chinese Way.”

When Chua, a first generation Chinese immigrant, married a white Jewish guy named Jed, they agreed that their children would be raised Jewish but parented Chinese. As a Chinese mother, Chua instituted rules like no sleepovers, no playdates, no TV or video games, no school plays and no grade less than an A. It also meant they had to play either the violin or the piano and practice six hours a day — even on vacation.

Ever wonder why the Asian kids do better at math? Why they’re always the child prodigies playing Carnegie Hall? Well, here’s your answer. It’s because they had a Chinese mother standing over them, threatening to donate their beloved dollhouse to the Salvation Army piece by piece until they had mastered a complicated piano composition (a true story in the Chua household).

Harsh by Western standards, which is why it struck a major nerve among American parents and shot to No. 4 on the New York Times Bestsellers List. 

It’s a rich, timely topic: Eastern vs. Western parenting styles. I don’t begrudge Chua’s ranking on the bestseller list for a minute. What I do take issue with is that the final chapter of the book is a total cop out.

I liked the story well enough. While taking us through her reasons for being a Chinese mother, what that looked like on a daily basis and the effect it had on her daughters, both good and bad, Chua raises some very important issues about the purpose of parenting and the meaning of life (is it to strive for excellence in everything we do?)

But after Chua’s younger daughter, Lulu, refuses to submit to her will in a dramatic, climatic scene, Chua loses steam. She agrees to let Lulu, then 13, quit violin and play tennis instead. It’s a monumental victory for Lulu and a major strike against Chinese parenting (and widely recounted by Chua on the talk show circuit so don’t blame me for giving away anything).

After that happens, Chua is at a loss for words. Literally.

Her last chapter basically goes like this: "I don't know how to end this book so I'm going to tell you what it was like for me to write this book, recount conversations I had with my daughters about the fact that I don’t know how to end this book, tell you their reactions to drafts of the manuscript I circulated before publishing this book, throw in something about my dying sister, say I don't know the meaning of life and then try to make a joke about getting another dog."

Yuck. Talk about failing to bring it home.

Plus, it’s a major violation of the Sausage Principle. People love sausage but they don’t want to know how it’s made. In the book itself, I don’t want to know how hard it was for Chua to write the ending. I don’t want to hear about her daughters' reactions. That’s the backstory behind the story — the one she can recount in interviews on the Today Show, but not to readers who have come this far with her on her journey only to watch her stall the car.

I get it that writing the ending was hard. I really do. I’ve been busted by members of my own writing class for speeding up to the end because I didn’t know how to wrap things up or leaving the ending “artfully” vague (only French filmmakers can do that well).  And I’ve deserved to be busted. Readers know when they haven’t gotten their money’s worth.

I’m just surprised that Ann Godoff, Chua’s editor at the Penguin Press, let her get away with it. Clearly, she isn’t a Chinese mother.