The Tiger Mother’s Daughter Gets an Op-Ed

by Liz Colville

Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, the 18-year-old daughter of Amy Chua, who published that firestorm-causing memoir excerpt called “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal last week, gets the floor at the New York Post today, quipping her way through a second-person defense of her mother. In explaining that the haters probably didn’t get her mother’s dark humor, she employs some of her own:

They think you’re serious about all this, and they assume Lulu and I are oppressed by our evil mother. That is so not true. Every other Thursday, you take off our chains and let us play math games in the basement.

There’s more of this:

A lot of people have accused you of producing robot kids who can’t think for themselves. Well, that’s funny, because I think those people are . . . oh well, it doesn’t matter.

Haha! She soon gets to her main point, which is that her parents helped her become herself early on, and she consequently never felt the need to rebel:

I pretty much do my own thing these days — like building greenhouses downtown, blasting Daft Punk in the car with Lulu and forcing my boyfriend to watch “Lord of the Rings” with me over and over — as long as I get my piano done first.

No mention of the Internet. Impressive. But it’s still sad that a card Sophia once made for her mother was rejected as crap — Sophia here agrees that her card sucked. But crappy cards and drawings are what childhood is all about! And does this piece mean Sophia is in PR now?

Meanwhile, the actual book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is getting the ol’ three-star treatment on Amazon, but it has a staggering number of reviews (132 at last count) for something released just seven days ago. Any press, as they say…