Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

remember once we took a vacation to Greece with my parents. After seeing Athens (where we managed to slip in a little practicing between the Acropolis and the Temple of Poseidon), we took a small plane to the island of Crete. We arrived at our bed-and-breakfast around three in the afternoon, and my father wanted to head out immediately. He couldn’t wait to show the girls the Palace of Knossos, where according to legend the Minoan King Minos kept the Minotaur, a monster with a man’s body and bull’s head, imprisoned in an underground labyrinth.
    “Okay, Dad,” I said. “But Lulu and I just have ten minutes of violin to do first.”
    Everyone exchanged alarmed glances. “How about practicing after dinner?” my mother suggested.
    “No, Mom,” I said firmly. “Lulu promised she’d do this, because she wanted to stop early yesterday. But if she cooperates, it really should just take ten minutes. We’ll go easy today.”
    I wouldn’t wish the misery that followed on anyone: Jed, Sophia, Lulu, and I cooped up in one claustrophobic room, with Jed lying on top of the bedspread, grimly trying to focus on an old issue of the International Herald Tribune; Sophia hiding in the bathroom reading; my parents waiting in the lobby, afraid to interfere and afraid other guests would overhear Lulu and me bickering, yelling, and provoking each other. (“That note was flat again, Lulu.” “Actually, it was sharp, Mommy, you don’t know anything.”) Obviously, I couldn’t stop after ten minutes when Lulu had refused to play even a single scale properly. When it was all over, Lulu was furious and tear-stained, Jed was tight-lipped, my parents were sleepy—and the Palace of Knossos was closed for the day.
    I don’t know how my daughters will look back on all this twenty years from now. Will they tell their own children, “My mother was a controlling fanatic who even in India made us practice before we could see Bombay and New Delhi”? Or will they have softer memories? Perhaps Lulu will recall playing the first movement of the Bruch Violin Concerto beautifully in Agra, in front of an arched hotel window that looked straight out to the Taj Mahal; we didn’t fight that day for some reason—probably jet lag. Will Sophia recall with bitterness the time I laid into her at a piano in Barcelona because her fingers were not kicking high enough? If so, I hope she also remembers Rocquebrune, a village perched on a cliff in France, where the manager of our hotel heard Sophia practicing and invited her to perform for the entire restaurant that evening. In a glass-windowed room overlooking the Mediterranean, Sophia played Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, and got bravos and hugs from all the guests.

15
     

     
    Popo
     

     
    Florence
     
    In January 2006, my mother-in-law, Florence, called from her apartment in Manhattan. “I just got a call from the doctor’s office,” she said in an odd, slightly exasperated voice, “and now they’re telling me that I have acute leukemia .” Just two months earlier, Florence had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, but true to her indomitable personality, she’d gone through surgery and radiation without a complaint. The last I’d heard, everything was fine, and she was back on the NewYork art scene, thinking about writing a second book.
    My stomach tightened. Florence looked sixty but was about to turn seventy-five. “That can’t be right, Florence, it must be a mistake,” I said aloud, stupidly. “Let me get Jed on the phone, and he’ll figure out what’s going on. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”
    Everything wasn’t all right. A week after our conversation, Florence had checked into New York Presbyterian Hospital and was starting chemotherapy. After hours of agonizing research and third and fourth opinions, Jed had helped Florence choose a less harsh arsenic-based treatment plan that wouldn’t make her as sick. Florence always listened to Jed. As she