Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1 - The Chinese Mother

  Chapter 2 - Sophia

  Chapter 3 - Louisa

  Chapter 4 - The Chuas

  Chapter 5 - On Generational Decline

  Chapter 6 - The Virtuous Circle

  Chapter 7 - Tiger Luck

  Chapter 8 - Lulu’s Instrument

  Chapter 9 - The Violin

  Chapter 10 - Teeth Marks and Bubbles

  Chapter 11 - “The Little White Donkey”

  Chapter 12 - The Cadenza

  Part Two

  Chapter 13 - Coco

  Chapter 14 - London, Athens, Barcelona, Bombay

  Chapter 15 - Popo

  Chapter 16 - The Birthday Card

  Chapter 17 - Caravan to Chautauqua

  Chapter 18 - The Swimming Hole

  Chapter 19 - How You Get to Carnegie Hall

  Chapter 20 - How You Get to Carnegie Hall, Part 2

  Chapter 21 - The Debut and the Audition

  Chapter 22 - Blowout in Budapest

  Part Three

  Chapter 23 - Pushkin

  Chapter 24 - Rebellion

  Chapter 25 - Darkness

  Chapter 26 - Rebellion, Part 2

  Chapter 27 - Katrin

  Chapter 28 - The Sack of Rice

  Chapter 29 - Despair

  Chapter 30 - “Hebrew Melody”

  Chapter 31 - Red Square

  Chapter 32 - The Symbol

  Chapter 33 - Going West

  Chapter 34 - The Ending

  Coda

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  About the Author

  ALSO BY AMY CHUA

  Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall

  World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy

  Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

  THE PENGUIN PRESS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London W C2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Amy Chua, 2011

  All rights reserved

  Portions of Chapter Four first appeared as “On Becoming American” in Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources of Its Strength, edited by David Halberstam (National Geographic, 2003).

  Photograph credits

  Bachrach Photography: page 30

  © Susan Bradley Photography: 168

  Peter Z. Mahakian: 216, 223

  All other photographs from the author’s family collection.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Chua, Amy.

  Battle hymn of the tiger mother / Amy Chua.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 9781101479629

  1. Chua, Amy. 2. Mothers-United States-Biography. 3. Chinese American women-Biography. 4. Mothers and daughters-China. 5. Mothers and daughters-United States. I. Title.

  HQ759.C59 2011

  306.874’3092—dc22

  [B] 2010029623

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  For Sophia and Louisa

  And for Katrin

  This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It’s also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin, and how we made it to Carnegie Hall.

  This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.

  But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

  Part One

  The Tiger, the living symbol of strength and power, generally inspires fear and respect.

  1

  The Chinese Mother

  A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereo-typically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do: • attend a sleepover

  • have a playdate

  • be in a school play

  • complain about not being in a school play

  • watch TV or play computer games

  • choose their own extracurricular activities

  • get any grade less than an A

  • not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama

  • play any instrument other than the piano or violin

  • not play the piano or violin.

  I’m using the term “Chinese mother” loosely. I recently met a supersuccessful white guy from South Dakota (you’ve seen him on television), and after comparing notes we decided that his working-class father had definitely been a Chinese mother. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise.

  I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western parents come in all varieties. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Westerners are far more diverse in their parenting styles than the Chinese. Some Western parents are strict; others are lax. There are same-sex parents, Orthodox Jewish parents, single parents, ex-hippie parents, investment banker parents, and military parents. None of these “Western” parents necessarily see eye to eye, so when I use the term “Western parents,” of course I’m not referring to all Western parents—just as “Chinese mother” doesn’t refer to all Chinese mothers.

  All the same, even when Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments thirty minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.

  Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable diff
erences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that “stressing academic success is not good for children” or that “parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun.” By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be “the best” students, that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” and that if children did not excel at school then there was “a problem” and parents “were not doing their job.” Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately ten times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

  This brings me to my final point. Some might think that the American sports parent is an analog to the Chinese mother. This is so wrong. Unlike your typical Western overscheduling soccer mom, the Chinese mother believes that (1) schoolwork always comes first; (2) an A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; (4) you must never compliment your children in public; (5) if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and (7) that medal must be gold.

  2

  Sophia

  Sophia

  Sophia is my firstborn daughter. My husband, Jed, is Jewish, and I’m Chinese, which makes our children Chinese-Jewish-American, an ethnic group that may sound exotic but actually forms a majority in certain circles, especially in university towns.

  Sophia’s name in English means “wisdom,” as does Si Hui, the Chinese name my mother gave her. From the moment Sophia was born, she displayed a rational temperament and exceptional powers of concentration. She got those qualities from her father. As an infant Sophia quickly slept through the night, and cried only if it achieved a purpose. I was struggling to write a law article at the time—I was on leave from my Wall Street law firm and desperate to get a teaching job so I wouldn’t have to go back—and at two months Sophia understood this. Calm and contemplative, she basically slept, ate, and watched me have writer’s block until she was a year old.

  Sophia was intellectually precocious, and at eighteen months she knew the alphabet. Our pediatrician denied that this was neurologically possible, insisting that she was only mimicking sounds. To prove his point, he pulled out a big tricky chart, with the alphabet disguised as snakes and unicorns. The doctor looked at the chart, then at Sophia, and back at the chart. Cunningly, he pointed to a toad wearing a nightgown and a beret.

  “Q,” piped Sophia.

  The doctor grunted. “No coaching,” he said to me.

  I was relieved when we got to the last letter: a hydra with lots of red tongues flapping around, which Sophia correctly identified as “I.”

  Sophia excelled in nursery school, particularly in math. While the other kids were learning to count from 1 to 10 the creative American way—with rods, beads, and cones—I taught Sophia addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals the rote Chinese way. The hard part was displaying the right answer using the rods, beads, and cones.

  The deal Jed and I struck when we got married was that our children would speak Mandarin Chinese and be raised Jewish. (I was brought up Catholic, but that was easy to give up. Catholicism has barely any roots in my family, but more of that later.) In retrospect, this was a funny deal, because I myself don’t speak Mandarin—my native dialect is Hokkien Chinese—and Jed is not religious in the least. But the arrangement somehow worked. I hired a Chinese nanny to speak Mandarin constantly to Sophia, and we celebrated our first Hanukkah when Sophia was two months old.

  As Sophia got older, it seemed like she got the best of both cultures. She was probing and questioning, from the Jewish side. And from me, the Chinese side, she got skills—lots of skills. I don’t mean inborn skills or anything like that, just skills learned the diligent, disciplined, confidence-expanding Chinese way. By the time Sophia was three, she was reading Sartre, doing simple set theory, and could write one hundred Chinese characters. (Jed’s translation: She recognized the words “No Exit,” could draw two overlapping circles, and okay maybe on the Chinese characters.) As I watched American parents slathering praise on their kids for the lowest of tasks—drawing a squiggle or waving a stick—I came to see that Chinese parents have two things over their Western counterparts: (1) higher dreams for their children, and (2) higher regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they can take.

  Of course, I also wanted Sophia to benefit from the best aspects of American society. I did not want her to end up like one of those weird Asian automatons who feel so much pressure from their parents that they kill themselves after coming in second on the national civil service exam. I wanted her to be well rounded and to have hobbies and activities. Not just any activity, like “crafts,” which can lead nowhere—or even worse, playing the drums, which leads to drugs—but rather a hobby that was meaningful and highly difficult with the potential for depth and virtuosity.

  And that’s where the piano came in.

  In 1996, when she was three, Sophia got two new things: her first piano lesson, and a little sister.

  3

  Louisa

  Louisa

  There’s a country music song that goes, “She’s a wild one with an angel’s face.” That’s my younger daughter, Lulu. When I think of her, I think of trying to tame a feral horse. Even when she was in utero she kicked so hard it left visible imprints on my stomach. Lulu’s real name is Louisa, which means “famous warrior.” I’m not sure how we called that one so early.

  Lulu’s Chinese name is Si Shan, which means “coral” and connotes delicacy. This fits Lulu too. From the day she was born, Lulu had a discriminating palate. She didn’t like the infant formula I fed her, and she was so outraged by the soy milk alternative suggested by our pediatrician that she went on a hunger strike. But unlike Mahatma Gandhi, who was selfless and meditative while he starved himself, Lulu had colic and screamed and clawed violently for hours every night. Jed and I were in ear-plugs and tearing our hair out when fortunately our Chinese nanny Grace came to the rescue. She prepared a silken tofu braised in a light abalone and shiitake sauce with a cilantro garnish, which Lulu ended up quite liking.

  It’s hard to find the words to describe my relationship with Lulu. “All-out nuclear warfare” doesn’t quite capture it. The irony is that Lulu and I are very much alike: She inherited my hot-tempered, viper-tongued, fast-forgiving personality.

  Speaking of personalities, I don’t believe in astrology—and I think people who do have serious problems—but the Chinese Zodiac describes Sophia and Lulu perfectly. Sophia was born in the Year of the Monkey, and Monkey people are curious, intellectual, and “generally can accomplish any given task. They appreciate difficult or challenging work as it stimulates them.” By contrast, people born in the Year of the Boar are “willful” and “obstinate” and often “fly into a rage,” although they “never harbor a grudge,” being fundamentally honest and warmhearted. That’s Lulu exactly.

  I was born in the Year of the Tiger. I don’t want to boast or anything, but Tiger people are noble, fearless, powerful, authoritative, and magnetic. They’re also supposed to be lucky. Beethoven and Sun Yat-sen were both Tigers.

  I had my first face-off with Lulu when she was about three. It was a freezing winter afternoon in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the coldest days of the year. Jed was at work—he was a professor at Yale Law School—and Sophia was at kindergarten. I decided that it would be a perfect time to introduce Lulu to the piano. Excited about working together—with her brown curls, round eyes, and china doll face, Lulu was deceptively cute—I put her on the piano bench, on top of some comfortable pillows. I
then demonstrated how to play a single note with a single finger, evenly, three times, and asked her to do the same. A small request, but Lulu refused, preferring instead to smash at many notes at the same time with two open palms. When I asked her to stop, she smashed harder and faster. When I tried to pull her away from the piano, she began yelling, crying, and kicking furiously.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was still yelling, crying, and kicking, and I’d had it. Dodging her blows, I dragged the screeching demon to our back porch door, and threw it open.

  The wind chill was twenty degrees, and my own face hurt from just a few seconds’ exposure to the icy air. But I was determined to raise an obedient Chinese child—in the West, obedience is associated with dogs and the caste system, but in Chinese culture, it is considered among the highest of virtues—if it killed me. “You can’t stay in the house if you don’t listen to Mommy,” I said sternly. “Now, are you ready to be a good girl? Or do you want to go outside?”

  Lulu stepped outside. She faced me, defiant.

  A dull dread began seeping though my body. Lulu was wearing only a sweater, a ruffled skirt, and tights. She had stopped crying. Indeed, she was eerily still.

  “Okay good—you’ve decided to behave,” I said quickly. “You can come in now.”