Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of) by Elaine Lui Page A

struggling with my cultural identity. As a first-generation child born to immigrants, there was no model for me to follow; I was part of a new breed. And the Squawking Chicken was the only Chinese force in my life who could help me find the balance between my environment and my heritage. Ma shamed me so that I would not suppress the Chinese part of myself to try to become something I could never be. I would never be a North American white girl. But I could be a North American girl with a Chinese background. I could stop being ashamed of being a North American girl with a Chinese background.
    It took a lot of work. The North American influence can be overpowering. Through my teen years, surrounded by white friends, the Chinese half of me was like wax, soft andmalleable against the heat of desire to blend in. And every time I wanted contact lenses to lighten my eyes or picked the wrong shade of foundation to lighten my skin, Ma was there. To shame me—yes. But really to remind me who I was, to rebuild me.

CHAPTER 6
     

Miss Hong Kong Is a Whore

     
    I don’t ever remember Ma telling me that I was beautiful. It’s not that she ever said I was ugly. Or that she didn’t, on occasion, tell me I looked nice, even pretty. But between Ma and me, there’s never been that mother-daughter movie moment, somewhere in the third act, when she’s held my hand and through eyes brimming with tears, she’s whispered, her voice choked with emotion:
“Baby, you are so beautiful.”
    For
starters, Ma and I don’t speak like that
to each other. Actually, we don’t speak like that to
anyone. Ma abhors affection—physical and verbal. She’s not great with
hugs
—giving or receiving. And corny talk is gross to her. This is partly cultural. “I love you” in Chinese is super, super cringey. In our language, people just don’t say it like that, straight up. We might say, “I care about you a lot.” Or “I like you so much,”but actually uttering those three words, “I love you,” is uncommon. It sounds weird. It sounds uncomfortably intimate. “I love you” is used only between lovers, never as a general expression of feeling between anyone in any other kind of relationship, and even then it’s reserved for those very rare occasions, in total privacy and never as an open declaration.
    But the Squawking Chicken’s emotional reticence goes beyond the standard Chinese reserve. She’s just not one to share her affection through words or gestures. Ma prefers to show her love through action. So if she ever did tell me she loves me, or that I’m beautiful, I think I would laugh. Or rush her to the hospital. Because that would be a sign that she’d gone insane. These are just not words that would ever come out of Ma’s mouth. Quite the opposite, in fact.
    I was eleven years old when Ma first told me I wasn’t beautiful. Of course, we were at Grandmother’s mah-jong den. While Ma played, I watched the Miss Hong Kong pageant on TV. Back then, the Miss Hong Kong pageant was a big deal. There were only two main broadcasters in Hong Kong in the eighties. TVB was the most watched and most powerful. It had the resources to turn Miss Hong Kong into the major event of the summer, splitting each round into a weekend special, so that the pageant took up almost an entire month.
Everyone
watched Miss Hong Kong.
Everyone
talkedabout Miss Hong Kong. And
every
little girl wanted to be Miss Hong Kong.
    It was the day of the semifinals. The favorite that year was Joyce Godenzi, born to an Australian father and Chinese mother. Godenzi was gorgeous, with wide-set eyes and curly hair, a totally different aesthetic than all the other contestants. Hong Kong was obsessed with her. I was obsessed with her. I practiced walking like her. I threw a shawl around my shoulders, pretending it was the Miss Hong Kong cape that’s presented to the winner when she’s crowned. I clutched a soup ladle in both hands, imagining it was the diamond scepter that Miss