Preface and Acknowledgments

Abstract

deal of public commotion over a controversial book related to Asian American families written by law professor Amy Chua. The book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is a memoir describing the draconian-like parenting methods Chua had supposedly adopted from her Chinese parents that she used to raise two highly accomplished daughters. As an American-born daughter to Chinese immigrant parents, she talks about the ups and downs of trying to enforce her own rendition of Chinese parenting, which involved strictly managing her daughters’ schedules around schoolwork and music lessons, forbidding them from attending sleepovers or parties, and showering them with criticism and threats as opposed to praise and encouragement if they did not earn a perfect A. Putting aside the question of whether or not such rigid parenting strategies indeed explain Asian American “success”—a subject that has been well disputed by numerous research studies, I was interested in understanding the powerful psychology and culturally rooted emotions that shape these parentchild relationships and how they affect Asian Americans as they come of age. My interviews suggest that Chua’s strong view on parenting and family among Asian Americans does stereotype and exaggerate the diverse experiences of second-generation Asian Americans I myself encountered in the New York metropolitan area, many of whom did not relate to the kind of extreme, authoritarian parenting approach she claimed to have experienced in her own family. This is not to say that traditional values on education and discipline did not surface in the accounts of second-generation adults I interviewed. Indeed, intergenerational struggles over academics and friends and lack of verbal affirmation and affection from their parents also formatively