The “Tiger Mom” herself explains that she’s really just a pussycat when it comes to raising her kids.  Excerpt from the talk on January 12, 2012.

AMY CHUA, Author, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother; John M. Duff Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Much of the intense reaction to my book has been based on a misunderstanding. The Wall Street Journal excerpted some portions from the [book’s] opening under the headline, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” I must have said this a thousand times: I did not choose or ever see that headline until I opened up the newspaper, and I do not agree with it. I do not believe that Chinese parenting is superior. I believe there are many ways of being a good parent.

I was raised by very strict Chinese immigrant parents, who came to the United States in 1960 to attend graduate school. My parents, who are both in the audience, actually eloped to M.I.T. They were so poor, they couldn’t afford heat their first two winters in Boston and had to wear blankets to keep warm.

As parents, my mom and dad demanded total respect and were very tough with my three younger sisters and me. In fact, the famous list, that I feel like the entire world has now seen – the “no grade lower than an A-; no play dates, sleepovers; gotta play the piano or violin” – that list, which I intended to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, was actually applied to me straight, with no humor.

The strategy worked with me. Today, I adore my parents. We actually voluntarily vacation with my parents; they’re very close to my daughters; and I feel I owe them everything. I had lots of complaints growing up: “Why all these rules? Why can’t we be normal?” In retrospect, I feel that my parents having had high expectations for me – coupled with love, of course; obviously, if there’s no love, there’s nothing – is the greatest gift that anyone has ever given me. That is why, even though my husband is not Chinese, I tried to raise my own two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, the same way that my parents raised me.

With my first daughter, Sophia, things went very smoothly. She was an easy kid; she was self-motivated; I never had to force her to do anything. But then my second daughter, Lulu, came along, and she is a real fireball. She and I have very similar personalities, which I think might be part of the issue, but boy, did I get my come-uppance.

Lulu and I locked horns from day one. It was weird. I do feel that she was born saying “No,” and the book – which is supposed to be funny; I’ve spent the last year trying to explain that – is filled with zany showdowns between my two daughters and me in which they always win.

There’s one [thing] out there that says, “Amy Chua cruelly put her three-year-old daughter out in the freezing cold.” Here’s how that scene actually went. It was a very freezing cold day. Lulu was three, and I decided that we would try playing the piano for the first time. I sat her down and told her to play a note three times. Lulu, instead of listening to me, began smashing at the piano with two open fists. When I told her to stop, she started screaming and kicking and ripping things and tearing my hair; after 15 minutes of this, I dragged her over to the door. It was freezing cold outside. I said, “Lulu, you can’t stay in this house if you don’t stop screaming and kicking.” So what does Lulu do? She’s just dressed in a sweater and tights and a skirt, not even a coat. She looks at me, and then she steps outside and faces me, defiant.

I started panicking. I ended up having to bribe her to come back in with hot chocolate and brownies. There is nothing I can threaten her with, which is why I’ve stopped doing that; she always calls my bluff.

When Lulu turned 13, she rebelled. We’d always argued, but really, Lulu and I have just been close all our lives. After these arguments, we’d always end up in bed, snuggling, making fun of each other. But when she turned 13 – this is just universal adolescence – Lulu rebelled in a way that was not funny at all. She suddenly became very angry, alienated and rude, and seemed to turn against everything I had ever stood for.

Around the same time, my younger sister got leukemia. It was a very dark stage in my life. I had always been an over-confident mom, but for the first time in my life, I started asking myself, “Is my family falling apart? Have I done everything wrong?”

The culminating scene of the book takes place in Red Square, Moscow. Lulu and I had a terrible, humiliating, screaming public fight, and Lulu said to me the most painful things that anyone has ever said to me. She said, “I hate you; I hate this family; I hate the violin. You make me feel bad about myself. You’re a terrible mother. You’re selfish. Everything you say you do for me is actually for yourself.” I actually think I’m pretty hard on myself in this book. It’s pretty openly self-incriminating.

After that, I changed pretty much cold turkey. Not completely, but I pulled back. Right then, I saw it differently and I realized, “My God. I might actually lose my daughter.” When I framed it that way, I didn’t care about the violin, or school or anything. I just didn’t want to lose my daughter. So began a slow process, but I basically let Lulu drop the violin, which was very painful; she was a beautiful player, a concert master. She wanted to play tennis instead. I really loosened up socially. She’s got an iPod, Facebook, texting; she’s had four sleepovers in the last two months – which I’m not happy about, in case you think I’m a convert.

The models that I had in mind when I wrote this book were actually David Sedaris, a book by Dave Eggers – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – and then a much more obscure book by Vladimir Nabokov called Pale Fire. I have always loved books with unreliable narrators, where you can’t quite believe everything they’re saying. You have to read between the [lines]; it’s filled with weird contradictions. In this book, I make my character very flawed and obtuse, and the reality of what is happening is conveyed through the critical voices of my two daughters. If you read this book, you see instantly that my daughters were not raised in a traditional Asian household at all. I was raised in a traditional Asian household; I was terrified of my dad and mom. I would never have talked back to them. By contrast, my story is told entirely through the strong, rebellious voices of both Sophia and Lulu.

What so many people miss about this book – because of all the stuff about the rules; they read that superficially – is this book actually celebrates rebellion. Lulu, the heroine of the book, is clearly a rebel. At the end, I reveal that my own father was a rebel. [He] was a black sheep and turned his back on his family; hated his family; left Asia; never looked back. The entire book is defiantly non-conformist, and outrageous. My mother, who actually likes the book, said to me, “No Chinese person would ever write this.” So my book is more complex than some of you may have heard.

The book did very well in China – sadly, for all the wrong reasons. When I first saw the Chinese edition, I remember calling my agent and my husband and saying, “I need to bring an injunction to stop this thing.” They didn’t change the inside of the book, but the book in Chinese is called, Parenting by a Yale Law Professor: How to Raise Kids in America, and the cover is a huge picture of me wrapped in a red, white and blue flag.

I said, “We’ve got to stop this thing,” but I talked to my friends, lawyers, judges and people I know in China, and they all said to me the same thing: “Amy, I know it looks kind of tacky, but it’s not actually that bad a title.” The reason for that is because, in China, they have exactly the opposite problem. Even today, even very young kids basically study or drill or practice from 7 a.m. ’til 10 p.m. every day. Grades are publicly posted. There are teachers who tell good students not to play with bad students. Very little time for friends or relaxation; never heard of a sleepover. I’ve recently been in China. I was asked in front of this big group, “What do you think is the most important thing that we can do for our children here, in this country?” I said to a large media audience, “You’re not going to believe this, but I think that what this country needs for their children is some more play dates and sleepovers.”

I do not think, by the way, that that’s what we need more of in the United States.