Just read the book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Before I even read it, I heard about it from all sorts of people. The first place I heard about it was from some reference a friend wrote on Facebook. I had no idea what they were referring to, so I googled it. Thus ensued my study of, as I call her "the tiger-mommy". A most elusive creature.
I read article upon article, even reading the letter that her daughter Sophia sent to the New York Post, in defense of her mother. What I find interesting is that everyone seemed to have a different opinion of Amy Chua. Some were horrified, some were overly critical, some hadn't even read a single article about the controversy and hated Chua's guts. All of this only made me want to read the book more, but I was broke and couldn't buy it, so I settled for obsessing over this topic and talking to people about it.
Here's a link to the article that includes Sophia's letter. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6227a32
Last week, I went to my father's baptism. A wonderful affair, but not the point of this blog post. At the dinner we had after, The Amy Chua came up. Evelyn, a friend of my parents, is going to giving a talk about the Tiger mother, had read the book, but not heard about the wall street journal article that started all this controversy. So of course I had to state my opinion about that! I was thinking, who reads a book but doesn't look up the source of the controversy! I dove headfirst into the debate and my father followed. And so, this is how I learned that my dad in fact had a copy of the book and did not tell me of this fact.
So, this whole long story, is all pointing to the fact that I have now read the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I found "the tiger-mommy", and I rather like her. I am referring to Chua's mother of course. But, I also like Amy Chua, her personality and her life lessons learned, truly flow out of this memoir and into the hearts of people like me, who can understand her. My mother was something like Chua. My mother married an americanized man, a "westernized" Chinese man. So, I grew up ethnically Chinese, but my mother was thwarted at every turn when she tried to raise my sister and I like Chua raised her children. I regret it in many ways, because I now know the lessons my mother was trying to teach me. I didn't learn them, and am only now trying to instill them into myself...and IT'S HARD!!
So, while i disagree with the harshness that Chua may have used against her children, all parents are human and make mistakes. Chua even agrees that she may have been harsh at times. But I agree with her parenting style because, her children are better off for it, and I regret my father thwarting my mother from instilling the principles that Chua's children have into me, becuase I really really wish I had them now. And I can only hope that one day, when I have kids, that they will turn out half so well under my parenting.
