Helen Woo

You Can Not Choose Your Parents Helen Woo

You cannot choose your parents, but you can choose your future. For author Helen Woo, this phrase aptly explains the course of her life. In this memoir, Woo unveils her story, concentrating on her childhood and young adulthood as she describes being a victim of the "tiger mother" phenomenon. You Can Not Choose Your Parents chronicles Woo's rearing by controlling, traditional Chinese parents who held extremely high expectations for their oldest daughter. Though culturally acceptable, Woo reveals the emotional destructiveness of this form of upbringing. From her birth in Shanghai, to her school years, she narrates the story from a child's perspective and describes how the emotional and physical punishment affected her life. Part memoir, part cultural study, You Can Not Choose Your Parents shows how Woo was able emerge from her parents' harsh reign and break free from the "tiger mother" phenomenon to live a new life in the United States.