The immigrant mother knows how to survive. When she was a child, things were harder. It was her who washed the floors, cooked daily meals, and motivated herself to study. But she is no longer defined by her place in the home anymore. Instead, she knows the world and knows that it is something that will eat her children.
The emperor dowager is Juno. The immigrant mother is Juno. It's not that she doesn't want her children to make a decision - it's that her children never make the right one.
She tells her children to, quickly, make a decision about how to spend their afternoon, about which romantic partner makes them laugh, and about what career makes them live. She watches, incredulously, as her children hover around. I didn't have the luxury of time and neither do you, she wants to tell them. At the last second, right as her children's hands hover over the shiniest and brightest object in the box, she gives a sharp rebuke and slaps the little fingers out of the way.
"It's not my fault. It's your, for not making the right choice."
The emperor dowager started her life as a consort. Juno is matriarchy which, without self made control, manipulates patriarchy to shape its own version of power. The world of consorts is more political than the world of soldiers. There is no glory to dying from homemade poison.
The emperor dowager is a veteran. The court is the inverse of the battlefield. Where there is glory in war, there is only shame for the consort who has somehow survived. Whose secrets did you hold and stealthily leak when the time suited you right? How did you manage to kill your competition? She cannot control her world but she can control her child. She can't control anything without controlling her child.
The immigrant mother and the tiger mom is not a real person. She is a fabrication of what it means to be a woman of color, in control of her children and nothing else. In her context, she reads as a monster because her environment knows her as a real threat.
A group of parents gather and one woman talks about her child who has already learned how to count to a hundred. Another tops her by casually mentioning that his daughter has won a math competition. A third voice chimes in, about a son who received admission to a prestigious institution. This is what worshipping Juno looks like.
Don't underestimate Juno. She bides her time and waits for her opening. If she wants you to be a doctor, she will plant her seeds into every conversation until you genuinely wish to be not only a doctor but a surgeon. Don't forget that she is the one who gets to tell you what the world looks like, so that you don't have to experience the cruelties she thinks about constantly for yourself. You know only what she has the language to describe.
On the flip side, she is an alien in the world. No body trusts the emperor dowager. The immigrant mother only knows how to control because she doesn't know what it means to be bad or good in this new world. The emperor dowager is an aged concubine. The immigrant mother has lost her language. They traded what they traded for status, because they were afraid of falling through the cracks.
Juno, like the emperor dowager and the immigrant mother, is powerful. Behind every ruler and every success wielding member of the model minority, there she is waiting. Look for her and you'll find her everywhere.
