Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Amy Chua, 2011

A candid family memoir about ambition, discipline, rebellion, and a mother learning that love cannot be measured only by the success she intended.

8 parts, about 15 minutes to read.

Why read it

Chua sets out a demanding immigrant parenting creed, then shows it breaking against a younger daughter who refuses to yield
Invites you to separate what discipline really produced from what survived in spite of the conflict around it
A memoir that argues with itself, letting husband, relatives and both daughters challenge the author's own conclusions

Amy Chua
- Born in Champaign, Illinois, to ethnic Chinese parents who had emigrated from the Philippines.
- Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was executive editor of the Harvard Law Review.
- Clerked for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the D.C. Circuit and practiced at the Wall Street firm Cleary Gottlieb before entering academia in 1994.
- Taught at Duke Law School for seven years, then joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2001.
- Her first book, World on Fire, was a New York Times bestseller.
- Her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was a runaway international bestseller and has been translated into 30 languages.
- In 2011 she was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.