Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

The book began generating controversy before it was even published, with an article in the New York Post last month calling it 'a series of shock-arguments wrapped in self-help tropes and it's meant to do what racist arguments do: scare people.'Īmy Chua with daughters Lulu (left) and Sophia. Rubenfeld's prediction proved accurate again. But I said, you'll see, they're going to say that, just to be sensational.' Nothing to do with skin colour, groups from every possible skin colour, religious and racial background … Nothing to do with genetics. With The Triple Package, says Rubenfeld: 'I said, the first headlines are going to be that we're racist, and it's ridiculous, because the book is the opposite. They were pushed to spend so much time practising musical instruments that Rubenfeld once found Sophia's teeth marks in the piano. It continued through the time she called Sophia 'garbage', and threatened to burn her soft toys. It began with a list of child-rearing edicts, including the fact that the couple's daughters, Sophia and Lulu, were never allowed to attend a sleepover, get any grade less than an A, fail to come first in any class except gym and drama, and had to play the piano or violin. 'She felt like the last wouldn't be either, so …' He lets this notion linger a second.Ĭhua's memoir might have been more nuanced and self-satirising than some critics suggested, but the firestorm it prompted was completely predictable. 'She kept imagining it wouldn't be,' says Rubenfeld.

'I kept saying: 'I don't think this book is going to be controversial, because it has so many studies in it …' But Jed said: 'Amy, it's going to be controversial!'' 'Jed's so much more sensible and prudent,' says Chua.

Where she is enthusiastic, he is dry and sardonic where she is clearly keen to ace this interview, he is witty, but much more guarded. Rubenfeld, also a Yale law professor and bestselling author (his thriller The Interpretation of Murder reached No 1 in the UK), is quite different. In the living room of her family's large New York apartment, light streaming through the windows, she is every bit the effusive, encouraging professor, just what you'd expect from someone who has won a teaching award for her work at Yale law school. Chua has said she just wants to be liked, that she doesn't aim to be controversial, and in person, if not her work, this is obvious.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua