I had such mixed feelings about this book. I think my favorite thing about it was that the front cover sets you up for a little of what you would expect. As I was reading, I had a lot of flashbacks to my own childhood. Not that my parents were strict, and I’m only 1/8th Chinese myself, but there were some echoes there that had been passed down from generation to generation.
I found myself disagreeing with Amy Chua’s methods, and even shocked and appalled at times, but there were also times where her sheer love for her children and the things going on in her life made me cry. I think you should definitely take this as more of a memoir if you’re to pick it up than a parenting guide! I don’t think I’d ever be able to be so strict or scream at my kids like that, but I’m not a parent either so what do I know?
I did enjoy reading about her internal struggle, the doubt in herself, the lessons that she learned while raising her kids. The book was well-written, and I feel like she was brutally honest with herself while writing it, not trying to gloss over her conduct at all. Reading this book gave me more appreciation of all the freedoms I had when I was growing up, and gave me ideas for how to better push myself to reach my goals, too. No, I’m not going to practice things for 3+ hours each day that I want to get good at, but I could probably stand to kick it up a notch and work harder for what I want.
