The Tiger, the living symbol of strength and power, generally inspires fear and respect.Ī lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.īut instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old. It's also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin, and how we made it to Carnegie Hall. This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. Chua also rarely refrained from criticizing her daughters, and in one of the many provocative passages that fill her book, she explains: Chua rode the girls hard, making sure they practiced at least three hours a day even on vacations, when she would call ahead to arrange access to pianos for Sophia in hotel lobby bars and basement storage rooms. The second, more rebellious daughter, Lulu, is a gifted violinist. Older daughter Sophia is a piano prodigy who played Carnegie Hall when she was 14 or so. When Chua married her husband, fellow Yale law professor and novelist Jed Rubenfeld, they agreed that their children would be raised Jewish and reared "the Chinese way," in which punishingly hard work - enforced by parents - yields excellence excellence, in turn, yields satisfaction in what Chua calls a "virtuous circle." The success of this strategy is hard to dispute.
The back story to Chua's memoir is this: She is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and is now a professor at Yale Law School and the author of two best-selling "big-think" books on free-market democracy and the fall of empires. Trust me, Battle Hymn is going to be a book club and parenting blog phenomenon there will be fevered debate over Chua's tough love strategies, which include ironclad bans on such Western indulgences as sleepovers, play dates, and any extracurricular activities except practicing musical instruments. That's the other gripping aspect of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: There's method to Chua's madness - enough method to stir up self-doubt in readers who subscribe to more nurturing parenting styles.
Chua's voice is that of a jovial, erudite serial killer - think Hannibal Lecter - who's explaining how he's going to fillet his next victim, as though it's the most self-evidently normal behavior.
In her new memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua recounts her adventures in Chinese parenting, and - nuts though she may be - she's also mesmerizing. What kind of a mother? Why, a mother who's raising her kids the Chinese, rather than the Western, way.
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