TOUGH-LOVE PARENTING---OR EXCESS ZEAL?
                        The Controversies over Any Chua's Book
                                              By Phyllis Powell 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of Northern California books
                                                                 Week starting Jan. 28, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 57 
            The commotion over Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on the air waves, newspapers and among friends is loud and clear.  Every mother wonders if she is doing the right job of rearing her children and carries anxiety constantly.  Amy has a determined, tough, demanding approach to rearing her two daughters, and many of her demands seem to border on cruelty.  Hence, every mother who reads and hears about this book is agitated and perturbed by its message.  However, I believe Amy Chua to be a devoted, loving and nurturing mother. 
            The book is a memoir, not a “how to” book.  The first daughter is a model daughter, even it seems as a teen-ager.   She is a pianist who gives a concert at Carnegie Hall and receives renown and praise in concerts from  New England to Hungary.  Both daughters are compelled to excel, helped along the way with Amy’s strict supervision.  Amy’s crisis for herself comes when she succumbs to her younger daughter’s rebellious nature at age 13 and allows her to give up her grueling practice sessions on the violin, despite the daughter’s being the concertmaster of a distinguished youth orchestra.  Amy resorts to writing this book.  My thoughts are that some of her demands are exaggerated to make the book more controversial and also to provoke her daughters (and her sublime, considerate husband, also a law professor at Yale University) into understanding her ambitions for them as their mother. 
          Bear in mind, in such conflicts, a mother usually wins.  Amy wins by writing this book to which her daughters are powerless to respond.
            Another theme of the book is that Amy notes that first generation children of immigrants are pushed in order to do better than their parents.  As generations come after, this determination gets watered down.  “Not on my watch,” she states.  She is a devoted mother, accompanying her daughters to their lessons, to special tutoring sessions, to special lessons several hours from home on weekends.  The girls are not allowed to have sleep-overs, playdates, be in a school play, or get any grade less than an A.  She oversees that they practice many hours a day, and if she is not there, she leaves long notes on specific sections and specific directions in the music.  She arranges practice sessions and piano access on family vacations.  An industrious Yale law professor, she believes that less slumber makes for a fuller life.  Her two other books, World on Fire and Day of Empire are serious, complicated and global in reach.  She is a diminutive woman who speaks with such rapid-fire intensity that even her mother tells her to slow down.
            Several other influences come into Amy’s life.  The family gets a Samoyed dog, but it is Amy who must walk and take care of the dog.  All her attempts to train the dog are not successful, but she loves the dog enough that she gets another.  She details two family members’ illnesses that she realizes cannot come under her control.  Her mother-in-law lives with the family until her sudden death.  Amy’s sister, also multi-talented and accomplished, a medical doctor and professor at Stanford University, becomes seriously ill.  Amy’s family rallies around the sister, her husband and children as well as the parents.   The despair and heartbreak over this illness are palpable.  Amy’s parents reside in Berkeley, where her father is a professor of electrical engineering at the university.
            I dare you to read this delightful, challenging, hilarious, aggravating book, which will linger long after in your thoughts.                           "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua,  Penguin Press, 237 pages, $25.95.
         © Phyllis Powell 2011
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       Phyllis Powell is a book-review contributor to www.artssf.com.
   These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) focus on book reviews (by authors of the region), plus theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists as well.
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