Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua
256 pp. Penguin Press. $29.95.
An excerpt from Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother unleashed a firestorm of controversy across the country when it was published in the Wall Street Journal in January. The excerpt, headlined “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” portrayed a wide array of restrictions Chua placed on her children – no sleepovers, no television – to which maternal figures everywhere cried “child abuse!” Beyond a backlash from parents, the excerpt started a discourse on the nature of childhood success that highlighted the disparities not only between Chinese Americans and white Americans, but also between the United States and China in the race for global predominance.
The sardonic snippet actually offers a skewed introduction to Chua’s book. Tiger Mother is neither a parenting how-to nor a commentary on U.S.-China relations, but rather a tongue-in-cheek, frank, and sometimes arrogant memoir of a mother’s struggle to do what she thinks is best for her children. While some scenes are just as provocative and contentious as the Journal excerpt, Chua chiefly delivers a humorous and honest prose that pokes fun at her own outrageous behavior. Her recent perspective, she admits, has grown out of years of taking the “tiger” style too seriously, something that at once had serious consequences for her, her husband, and her daughters.
In depicting her parenting style throughout Tiger Mother, Chua does come through as a tough, controlling mom, and in many instances, she makes no attempt to present herself as a likable character. The method works during those portions of the book in which Chua’s behavior seems especially crazy; once, when Chua’s daughter is practicing violin, her mother threatens, “If the next time’s not PERFECT, I’m going to TAKE ALL YOUR STUFFED ANIMALS AND BURN THEM!”
Likewise, it is hard not to laugh when Lulu, Chua’s rebellious daughter, says something cute, humbling, and mildly insulting in response to her mother’s demands. Lulu and Sophia, Chua’s more compliant daughter, often bring their mom back from the “la la land” of idealized perfection in Tiger Mother. For example, when Chua tries to complain to her daughters that, after 3,000 years of being skinny, the Chinese (in China) are suddenly getting fat as a result of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken, Sophia replies: “Didn’t you say you were so fat when you were little you couldn’t fit into anything?”
These and other portions of the book were presented in late February when Chua visited the Harvard Book Store to read excerpts, answer questions, and temper some of the seething responses to her piece in the Journal. In a stop on a hybrid book tour-PR campaign, Chua noted that the most outrageous portions of Tiger Mother had already appeared in the Journal. The parts she read aloud, she said, were intended to give the audience “a sense of what the book was really about.”
The audience mostly laughed along with Chua, perhaps because Tiger Mother is by nature a satire. However, one heated scene, depicting an argument between Chua and Lulu, wasn’t so humorous: After Chua once again tries to demand that Lulu practice longer with her instrument, Lulu screams, “I hate the violin. I HATE my life. I HATE you, and I HATE this family!” At that point, something broke in Chua, much like the glass Lulu shattered out of rage – Chua was “humbled by a thirteen-year-old.” While some bookstore attendees snickered at Chua’s takedown, others sympathized with the tiger mother, relating all too well with those moments in which parenting goes wrong.
Accepting her own parenting errors, Chua insisted that western and Chinese parents alike can only do what they think is best for their kids. At the talk, Chua explained that this means carrying “high expectations [of one’s children] coupled with an ability to convey that love is there.” Chua argued that as long as parents can convey this love, and they engage in no emotional or physical abuse, then parents have a right to decide how to raise their children – even if that means making their children practice piano for four hours a day.
In this way, Chua makes a compelling case for her choice of parenting. She emphasizes that “everything I do is unequivocally, 100% percent for my daughters,” and her reasoning isn’t as crazy as the Journal excerpt implies. After all, Chua could have allowed her daughters to give up their instruments and spared herself hours of monitoring practice and arguing with Lulu. In fact, Chua freely admits that “tiger mother” parenting had two distinct effects in her family: one that worked (as in Sophia’s case), and one that didn’t (as in Lulu’s case).
Chua’s point is ultimately a philosophical one, rather than practical one. Behind the satire of Tiger Mother, there lies a careful conception of the familial good life. For Chua, attaining this good life required that her children work hard throughout their childhoods. However, Chua concedes that each parent, western or Chinese, has a different conception of happiness and success along with a different way of ensuring that his or her children achieve the best life that they can afford. “All decent parents want to do what’s best for their children,” she remarked. “The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.”
