Carl Senna's List: Asian Literature

CULTURAL STUDIES
Retreat of the ‘Tiger Mother’
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: January 14, 2011
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TRY this at a dinner party in one of the hothouses of Ivy League aspiration — Cambridge, Scarsdale, Evanston, Marin County:
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Bob Daemmrich/Polaris
The author at a 2007 book signing.
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Motherlode Blog | Post a Comment: The ‘Tiger Mother’ Speaks (January 14, 2011)
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No More Mrs. Nice Mom (January 16, 2011)
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Lorenzo Ciniglio/Polaris
Amy Chua, author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, and daughters Lulu, left, and Sophia.
Declare that the way Asian-American parents succeed in raising such successful children is by denying them play dates and sleepovers, and demanding that they bring home straight A’s.

Note that you once told your own hyper-successful Asian-American daughter that she was “garbage.” That you threatened to throw out your other daughter’s dollhouse and refused to let her go to the bathroom one evening until she mastered a difficult piano composition. That you threw the homemade birthday cards they gave you as 7- and 4-year-olds back in their faces, saying you expected more effort.

Better yet, write a book about it.

What kind of reaction might you get?

In the week since The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt of the new book by Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” Ms. Chua has received death threats, she says, and “hundreds, hundreds” of e-mails. The excerpt generated more than 5,000 comments on the newspaper’s Web site, and countless blog entries referring in shorthand to “that Tiger Mother.” Some argued that the parents of all those Asians among Harvard’s chosen few must be doing something right; many called Ms. Chua a “monster” or “nuts” — and a very savvy provocateur.

A law blog suggested a “Mommie Dearest” element to her tale (“No. Wire. Hangers! Ever!!”). Another p