Sandra Tsing Loh has a new book out—Mother on Fire—about her adventures in the public education trenches that began when her daughter was ready to go to kindergarten and she couldn’t begin to afford the absurdly expensive private school that Sandra thought she wanted for her daughter.
(I’ll have more on the book next week.)
But in the meantime, you can see humorist, radio essayist, author, education activist—and comedic performer Sandra live and on stage this coming Friday, Saturday or Sunday night at the New Los Angeles Theatre Center on South Spring Street downtown.
We all really, really could use a laugh right now and Sandra is a great bet.
When she does one of her one woman shows, she’s not only funny, she’s smart-funny.
(The best kind.)
How devestating. I know know what she is going through. But I understand that this was hidden because the shooter was a brother of a police officer.
Sandy, I finally figured out that this comment was meant to be attached to “The Shooter,” story, not this notice about Sandra’s show. You might want to put it there.
opps sory, this was were it took me. Thanks for the heads up!
If ONLY things were as easy as being able to afford the tony private school that Sandra thought she wanted for her daughter — it’s the getting in that’s harder than most top colleges, and that’s even for K-6 schools which then require your kid to take another battery of tests, and kid and parents going through a barrage of “let’s see if we even like you” interviews that are worse than auditioning for a movie.
(NOT that spending over $20K is easy, either.)
But Sandra didn’t actually shoot anyone (yet), did she? That comment meant for another thread MAY indeed be reflective of any Angeleno parent’s secret wish, though.
I just got around to reading Susan Carpenter’s LAT Book REview which says that after Sandra became the poster child for free speech, for being fired from NPR for uttering an expletive (albeit in context of something else), she got what had eluded her hitherto, admission for her older daughter into one of the tony private schools that she’d eyed enviously. So seems that either she got a scholarship or the money suddenly was revealed to be a secondary issue to just plain not having been VIP enough to getting in in the first place, and making do with the plebes in a local school where crab-grass took the place of lush lawns, and the children of immigrants who reminded her too much of her own father replaced fellow Caltech grads. (Woody should respect that she graduated from there with a major in physics.)
Kind of puts a different spin on things: more of the usual “I’ll be a flaming liberal advocating for the blessings of diversity if I have no choice, but soon as I do, I’m out of here like the rest of my fellow write-a-check and hide behind gates liberals.” When they’re really rich or just wanna-be-seen, they attend $28,000 plate fundraisers for Obama and make sure they’re never within a stone’s throw of actually being among the children of the illegal immigrants whose right to come here they advocate for so eloquently.
WBC,
I think you misunderstood: Sandra got her kid into the bigtime expensive school (because she was suddenly considered a writer/celebrity mother, which gave her the magic Get-Into-School card), but ended up not sending her daughter there because Sandra and her husband couldn’t afford it. So then she embarked about the….um…adventure that eventually led her to send her daughter to the public school closest to her—and, in so doing, became a flaming convert to public education.
That change in attitude is, in large part, what the book is about. Sandra makes fun of herself for her original belief that she had to, had to, had to send her kids to a private school.
Now Sandra is entirely committed—both money and mouth—to promoting and improving public education. She is resolutely not one of those liberals who think they should be able to dictate what the public schools ought to do, but wouldn’t dream of sending her own kids there.
She’s one of the good guys.
I’m only part way through the book, but it’s a lot of fun to read. I suspect you’d enjoy it.
The Carpenter book review implies that the daughter went to the tony private school — check it out and see if you don’t read it the same way. She sure never states that Sandra couldn’t afford it and declined. (Though why’d she apply in the first place, then?)
I’m afraid I’m a little too close to the trenches to have the distance of irony from the subject matter — it would be like reading a satire about hospitals after you’ve had a few disastrous brushes with surgery, and are still battling the system.
However I have read excerpts here and there and heard Sandra speak — she sounds awfully conflicted between her liberal views, her desire for the social benefits of the tony school (which she still seems to yearn for) and her genuine desire to be a voice for “the people of the crabgrass schools.” Kind of like her own life, with a “dumpster-diving eccentric Chinese immigrant father” who was always badly dressed, amidst the academic elite of Caltech. All of that I can totally relate to, by the way.
WBC, I just read the review and I thought it implied that she neither got in nor could afford it.
But whatever—review or not review—I’m 1000 percent positive Sandra’s kid never went to the private school, both from reading the book and from conversations with her, several years ago, when she’d just started her daughter in public school.
I understand not feeling terribly amused by the school situation. It’s too dire to be amusing. (On the other hand, we must laugh in dark times, no?) But…check out the book and look for yourself. Even if you just stand in the book store and read a little without plunking down the whatever it costs for hardbacks these days.
Sandra’s waa-a-ay over the private school thing, I promise.
(Although when her kid hits middle school, temptation may rear its ugly head again. Who knows?)