Amy Chua, her husband Jed, two daughters Sophie and Lulu and their two dogs named Coco and Pushkin
The book that I recently read and when I say recent I mean ten minutes ago was Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I loaned it from my good friend Anna Bacalla. The book is the author’s parenting memoir. Written when her daughter rebelled against her after following her maternal instincts to raise her children the “Chinese Mother” way: not letting her kids have play dates or attend sleepovers , practice violin and piano rigorously and get straight As in class, it was a story of how a parent prepares her kids for the future and that she only wants the best for her daughters.
I find the book actually funny and very alarming. Funny because there are some scenes that you will imagine the author as a socialist dictator with a scepter ordering her daughters to practice 55 minutes in the piano or run scales and etudes with a violin. Alarming because it really presented the Chinese parenting technique as harsh and brutal yet accomplishes tremendous and laudable results.
Amy Chua enrolled Sophia, her eldest daughter, when the kid was six years old. I don’t really want to spoil the book for you by telling all the details here because there are just some tidbits of information that will make reading the book exhilarating. But the story revolves around the author being strict with her rules for her daughters about piano and violin practice, instilling comparison and ridicule on her daughter to drive them to become better and how two dogs changed their lives forever. The book also compares Western way of rearing children with that of the Chinese way.
Amy Chua and her two daughters
It’s really cool to think that out of communist-like upbringing, Chua was able to raise kids who, one of them eventually became a concert pianist and performed a recital in the Carnegie Hall, and together as sisters performed in a paying crowd in a concert in Budapest. The book makes you think how you will raise your own kids when you have one of your own: the Western Way which produced rebellious and juvenile delinquents or the Chinese Mother Way which according to the author, as practiced by many Asian families in the US, makes the Asians really really smart.
I don’t want to argue on Amy Chua’s parenting style because she clearly instilled discipline and drive on her daughter’s mind. I just find her technique too harsh and too brutal to have done it on poor innocent kids. But who am I to judge? I read the book, enjoyed it and was compelled to write what I think about it in totality. I think for the most part it makes you think whether you should raise children by instilling strict rules to prepare them for the future or let them find their way but guide them as they go through it. I really can’t answer because I have never been a parent. But reading the results of Amy Chua’s parenting style, I think being a Chinese Tiger Mother has it’s perks. You just have to bear the brunt of it in the end.
the book that kept me awake till the wee hours of the morning
The book is available in leading national bookstores nationwide. My friend bought the book for 995 php and it’s hardbound. You can get it at 295 in paperback edition.
The Prodigal Kid 