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

Lui, Elaine

3.57 out of 5 stars

2,025 ratings by Goodreads

9780345813480: Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345813480 ISBN 13: 9780345813480

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2015

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Most people think I’m exaggerating at first when I talk about the Chinese Squawking Chicken. But once they actually spend some time with her, they understand. They get it. Right away. She’s Chinese, she squawks like a chicken, she is totally nuts, and I am totally dependent on her.

When Elaine Lui was growing up, her mother told her, “Why do you need to prepare for the good things that happen? They’re good. They won’t hurt you. My job is to prepare you for the hard times, and teach you how to avoid them, whenever possible.” Neither traditionally Eastern nor conventionally Western, the Squawking Chicken raised her daughter drawing on Chinese fortune-telling, feng shui blackmail, good old-fashioned ghost stories, and shame and embarrassment in equal measure. And despite years of chafing against her mother’s parenting style, Elaine came to recognize the hidden wisdom—and immeasurable value—in her rather unorthodox upbringing.

Listen to the Squawking Chicken lays bare the playbook of unusual advice and warnings used to teach Elaine about hard work (“Miss Hong Kong is a whore”), humility (“I should have given birth to a piece of barbecue pork”), love and friendship, family loyalty (“Where’s my money?”), style and deportment (“Don’t be low classy”), finding one’s own voice (“Walk like an elephant, squawk like a chicken”) among other essentials. Along the way, Elaine poignantly reveals how her mother earned the nickname “Tsiahng Gai” or “squawking chicken” growing up in Hong Kong, enduring and rising from the ashes of her own hard times.

Listen to the Squawking Chicken is a loving mother-daughter memoir that will have readers laughing out loud, gasping in shock, and reconsidering the honesty and guts it takes to be a parent.

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Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2014: "You look like dried monkey flakes." Canadian TV personality and blog gossip gal Elaine Lui doesn't ease us into her mother's bold personality. "The Squawking Chicken," as her Hong Kong-born mother is known, is loud, opinionated, and fearless -- characteristics Lui celebrates in all their cringe-worthy glory, and for which she provides context through her mother's history. That upbringing was one of hardships and perseverance, informing a unique philosophy that she instilled in her daughter. At first (to Westerners, at least), this mother/daughter relationship may seem jarring, unbelievable. But in a book that ultimately acts as both a personal memoir and her mother's fascinating biography, Lui confidently peels back the layers to reveal that there is, in fact, a beautiful bond borne of tradition, sacrifices, pain, and, above all, love. --Robin A. Rothman

About the Author

ELAINE LUI is a celebrity gossip blogger and the voice behind LaineyGossip, a leading international celebrity news source followed by more than 1.5 million people internationally. Her TEDx Talk, “The Sociology of Gossip,” is about the critical place of gossip within modern pop culture. Elaine has been a reporter on CTV's daily entertainment show, Etalk, since 2006, is now a co-host on CTV's daily talk show, The Social, and previously worked for Covenant House Vancouver. Born in Toronto, she lived in Vancouver for thirteen years, before returning to Toronto.

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