Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of)
Elaine Lui
Language: English
Pages: 143
ISBN: B010EUGZBI
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
As the 800,000+ U.S. fans of Elaine Lui’s site know, her mother, aka The Squawking Chicken, is a huge factor in Elaine’s life. She pulls no punches, especially with her only child. “Where’s my money?” she asks every time she sees Elaine. “You’ll never be Miss Hong Kong,” she informed her daughter when she was a girl. Listen to the Squawking Chicken lays bare the playbook of unusual advice, warnings, and unwavering love that has guided Elaine throughout her life. Using the nine principles that her mother used to raise her, Elaine tells us the story of the Squawking Chicken’s life—in which she walked an unusual path to parent with tough love, humor, and, through it all, a mother’s unyielding devotion to her daughter. This is a love letter to mothers everywhere.
Life Is Short (No Pun Intended)
Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival
Life in the Middle Ages: From the Seventh (7th) to the Thirteenth (13th) Century
standing over a steaming terra-cotta pot and when I rushed forward to look, she shouted at me to get out of her way. Ma’s voice was even sharper than usual that day. And she looked tired. She hadn’t had time to have her hair blown out. It was lank, parted in the middle, stuck to both sides of her face. I knew not to bother her. A few hours passed and the magic turtle soup was ready. Ma took a bowl into Grandfather’s bedroom. She sat in a chair next to the bed. I was terrified to go inside, but I
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
show. Jacek and I could only fly back and forth from Vancouver to Toronto so many times to look at homes. We found a real estate agent, narrowed down the neighborhood we wanted to live in, and gave her a list of requirements, the staircase issue being one of them. She emailed potential properties to us, and if we were in town, we’d check them out, after clearing the pictures with the Squawking Chicken so that she could tell us if it passed her preliminary dirt test. But we weren’t in town when
they leased a property in a small town about an hour outside Toronto. They asked Dad to go into business with them. (We were on holiday with Sally and Don when my parents decided to have sex in the same room as me and ruin my life.) Sally and Don looked after the kitchen and the staff. Dad managed the accounts. We all had to pitch in. I spent weekends there bussing tables and packing takeout orders. Whenever Ma came to visit from Hong Kong—to renew her Canadian passport, attend a wedding—she
will never delete that email. There’s a little Squawking Chicken in you too! To Amy Moore-Benson, because without you, none of it would be possible. That we came back together after all that time is one of my favorite stories. To Gab—for the seemingly interminable torture sessions and your work (pro bono) and all the dinners and especially for letting my dad pee on your street. I’m not really sorry about that and I don’t think you’d want me to be either. To Fiona—it started that weekend in