Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger mother - Book review

Synopsis:

Published in 2011, Battle Hymn of the Tiger mother chronicles the experiences of a Philippines born Chinese Yale University law professor married to a Jewish American, in raising their two daughters Sophia and Loiusa, in Cosmopolitan 21^st century America. The book is written with a somewhat ironic tone suggesting western parenting fosters the idea of children’s individuality whereas ‘Chinese’ parenting cultivates competitiveness based on arming children with strong work habits and several hours of practice. The book has since its publication ignited a lot of debate with most westerners questioning Chua’s methods of parenting as many westerners believe the strict regime infringes on children’s rights. Even though her methods have been questioned, the results are quite great as Sophia and Lulu excelled at most of their activities, no grade below an A, and always excelling in their musical lessons travelling to perform violin and piano around America and Europe.

“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.” – Amy Chua

Publisher: Penguin Press

Pages: 240

Review:

Battle Hymn of the Tiger mother opens with a very interesting line that makes the reader want go on and on without putting the book down, even at the end of each of the three parts each with its own titled and numbered chapters.

‘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’

For a book that begins in such a grandiose fashion with a mother bragging about how a certain demographic she belongs to is so successful at ‘producing’ math whizzes, one would be forgiven for thinking the book is a parenting guide. Contrariwise, the book is full of somewhat controversial statements most of which contributed to the author being demonised after the book was published.

‘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 you want go outside?”  Lulu stepped outside. She faced me, defiant.’

The excerpt above is one of the many parts of the book where the reader may be forced at ‘face value’, to question Ms Chua’s model of parenting. I mean, what kind of parent throws her three year old child in the freezing cold? This was all for ‘refusing’ piano practice, or as it was, Amy demonstrated to the toddler how to play a single note with a single finger, evenly, three times, but little Lulu instead smashed at many notes at the same time with two open palms. Amy asked her to stop but the toddler smashed harder and the whole piano lesson escalated to a big furore where Lulu smashed at the piano with both hands faster and harder and reacting to attempts to pull her away from the piano by “yelling, crying, and kicking furiously”.

Like I say at face value one can judge Ms Chua harshly. As a parent, I have come to learn that there will be moments like that in parenting. I am a product of strict parenting myself thus the book made for very interesting reading. As a matter of fact, I too espouse strict parenting. This is more so during the formative years between birth and fifteen years. Thereafter, I strongly recommend the idea of easing up slightly. However, there is no manual for parenting that can be applied universally even among communities in the same geographical locations or with the same cultures.

What makes Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother such a wonderful read is the fact that it’s not a ‘how-to’ book or any guide/parenting manual. In the book, Ms Chua writes about many events where she pushes her two children to work extra hard in academics and the extracurricular activities she chose for them, putting many hours of practice. The girls were not allowed to have sleepovers, no playdates and most importantly no grade lower than an A on report cards. The results from her parenting style were great as her daughter were ‘perennial overachievers’,

She writes, ‘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.’

In another passage she writes, ‘But probably most important, we stuck with the Chinese model because the early results were hard to quarrel with. Other parents were constantly asking us what our secret was. Sophia and Lulu were model children. In public, they were polite, interesting, helpful, and well spoken. They were A students, and Sophia was two years ahead of her classmates in math.’

The truth of life is that children will only be performers in whatever they do if they are pushed. A lot of talented sportsmen have fallen by the way side because of lacking discipline and putting in extra hours of practice. Sir Alex Ferguson is famously quoted as saying, "David Beckham is Britain’s finest striker of a football not because of God-given talent but because he practises with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn’t contemplate." Another fact of life is that children will not work hard on their own unless given a push. They will prefer a lot of hours playing video games or watching television. In order for children to spend hours practicing, there has to be a deliberate push and Amy Chua’s Tiger parenting model may just be that push that is needed in order to ensure that children attain excellence and not mediocrity.

Nonetheless, while I may be a proponent of strict parenting, Ms Chua’s style was over bearing. In a way, it was almost as if she was trying so much to achieve her own dreams through her children which most times is never the best way to raise children. In doing so Ms Chua portrays herself more of a callous and over bearing mother. This is more so portrayed by the imperceptible role her husband, also a Yale University law professor, Jed Rubenfeld plays. Jed is not mentioned many times in the book unless the whole family is on a trip overseas or a mention of his family especially his mother who did not particularly get along well with Amy. Other moments when Jed is mentioned are when he tries to reign in on the excesses of his wife’s ‘Tiger parenting’ but he clearly didn’t get his way and there isn’t much mention of him.

Despite the book being controversial in many aspects according to western parenting standards, it is sure a good read and will ask a lot of introspective questions to many a reader. But take nothing 'too serious' from the book, it is just a tongue-in-cheek memoir. 
It is definitely not a parenting manual!

Maureen Nkandu’s Tried and Tested, My first Fifty years – Book Review

Synopsis:

“When she was twelve years old, Maureen Nkandu told Queen Elizabeth II that she wanted to be a television star when she grew up. Twenty years later she was able to tell the Queen at a reception in Durban South Africa that she had achieved her ambition. In her autobiography, Maureen discusses her early days at Zambia national Broadcasting Company and why she left, her move to Bophuthatswana, training in India and Europe, her challenging but exciting career with South African Broadcasting and her work with the BBC in London. In pursuit of a story and at considerable personal risk she tracked down rebel leaders like Laurent Kabila of the DRC, was arrested in Kinshasa on alleged spying charges, and just got out of Freetown before the rebels invaded. She has interviewed a long list of African and world political leaders and won awards for her broadcasting. More recently she has worked with the United Nations and the World Bank.

This book also frankly discusses Maureen’s family background, her rivalries with her siblings, difficult relationships, and sometimes abusive marriage. It also reveals her love for her parents, her three children and the deep she had for her journalist father.”

Publisher: Gadsden Publishers

Pages: 136

Review:

 “Kalusha and I were young, famous and madly in love. When I was seven months pregnant rumours started flying that I had given birth to a coloured-Indian baby. Ours was a very public break-up and I was humiliated.”, wrote Maureen Nkandu on facebook. This was a post she put up on 29^th June 2017 as part of the promotion and publicity of her book.

Another post read; “I was 18 years old when I joined ZNBC. I was young, naïve, confident, determined and grew into a seasoned news anchor. But I suffered immense sexual harassment and bullying. I refused to give in. They decided to transfer me to the commercial department and later ZIS saying I was a bad news reader. I said NO. It was time to leave.”

These two publicity posts were enough to make me mark my diary so I could get myself a copy when she was in Lusaka next on 1^st July 2017, as she was in Ndola on 30^th June. When Maureen Nkandu graced ZNBC screens in the early 90’s. Though very young, I was old enough to remember the lasting impression she left with me.

I took two days to read the book (maybe less). One can read the book within a day, but once I put the book down my wife picked it up and I couldn’t continue until she was done. The book is an easy read, succinct and quite thrilling, and stimulating I must say. Maureen lets the reader into her inner fears, then her fascinating strength of character, her sheer determination and zeal to rise whenever she faced adversity. Perhaps the most gripping aspects in the book was the fact that behind the beautiful face that was a darling of many Zambian and international viewers was a woman who was just human with her own flaws. A woman who was fragile and was taken advantage of by some men.

And yet it’s not all gloom and doom. The courage and strength of Maureen is shown through her fearlessness that made her leave her country of birth to apartheid South Africa. Her search for excellence shines through her story of how she left to study in Europe without even guaranteed tuition and other fees.

Perhaps the part of the book where I drew more inspiration is when she narrates her ordeal in the Democratic Republic of Congo after she and her cameraman (a supposed relative of Nelson Mandela), were arrested by Rogue soldiers for filming them as they were assaulting innocent civilians in the city center. The narration of her excursion into Freetown in Sierra Leone in the hope of a scoop to interview rebel leader Foday Sankoh was one gripping chapter. The fact that she hurriedly left that country just in time to escape an ambush of the UN peacekeeping troops some of whom had kept her and her colleague company and provided links for news sources. UN peacekeepers from Zambia caught off guard and 23 killed as Maureen puts it in her book, ‘hit like sitting ducks’.

That incident made sad global news headlines back then in 1999 as world cameras rolled on pictures of lifeless soldiers in UN uniforms with Zambian flags on the pocket and shoulder lay sprawled on the ground. The book highlights a lot of other career highlights for Maureen among them being the reporter who broke the news through the BBC that former Zambian president Fredrick Jacob Titus Chiluba would not change the constitution to stand for a third term of office. 

Throughout the pages, her book is an inspiration. In chasing her dreams, be it as a broke single mother barely surviving in foreign countries while pursuing her studies or her forays deep into rebel territories where civilisation almost seemed non-existent, her life story is full of inspiration.

However, I felt she was rather tight-fisted with some gritty details or ‘pin down facts’. For instance she mentions of sexual harassment from her boss at ZNBC which even almost destroyed her career, but there are no names mentioned. I bet the ‘boss’ preyed on more young journalists and definitely destroyed their careers. She mentions of colleagues who were in love affairs with government officials who used their authority to ensure she was removed from ZNBC to avert competition that she posed. She mentions some ANC comrades who were pivotal in her ‘escape’ from Bophuthatswana but there are no names or anything more detailed.

Some of the ‘revelations’ should have either included more detail or should have been completely left out of the book. Once you decide to pen a biography you have to be willing to let people in on the juicy details. This is what biographies are all about. If there are details that one is not willing to discuss, then one should not bring up the ‘clues’. The ANC connections for instance left me thinking that is a whole story that requires telling (maybe for another day). Granted, she opened up about her first sexual encounter and the humiliation she felt after she found hotel staff talking about it and other details like an abusive marriage and how she almost twice tried to commit suicide. She could have even spared us that, a child was born so obviously she had sexual encounters with Kalusha Bwalya. Her suicide attempts too were already in the public domain, hence nothing really new.

Despite the fact that I feel some juicy details were deliberately omitted, the book is an all-round excellent read. Maureen’s attempts to put in her own words some of the rumours that mostly followed her throughout her first 50 years is captivating. I like it all the more because she is one of the few non-political celebrities to write her biography. Zambia has a lot of heroes whose lives need to be put up and out to encourage and inspire. Politicians should not have the monopoly.

I recommend the book for anyone’s collection. It will petrify, terrify, inspire, challenge, motivate and all the while grip you.