My mom grew up in the Soviet Bloc, and she was a Tiger Mom. We didn't get away with much.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I just wasn't cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I'm more of an Irish Setter Dad.
I wanted - and still want - to tell my mother's story. She fled Stalin's army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11.
Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.
In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.
If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay!
My mom was born in Korea - Seoul, Korea, during the '50s, '51. She was abandoned; her and my uncle were abandoned. My grandfather was a Seabee and adopted my mom and my uncle, and brought them to Compton in the '50s. That's where she was raised.
I know not every mom is a secret KGB spy, but every mom has this whole other life. Every dad and every person has this whole other life.
I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.
My mother is Ukrainian. She immigrated to the U.S. from Canada as a child.
Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.