Amy Chua

Early life

Chua was born in Champaign, Illinois, to ethnic Chinese parents with Hoklo ancestry who emigrated from the Philippines. Her parents raised her speaking Hokkien. Her father, Leon O. Chua, is an electrical engineering and computer sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His ancestral hometown is Quanzhou, Fujian. Chua's mother was born in China in 1936, before relocating to the Philippines at the age of 2. She subsequently converted to Catholicism in high school and graduated from the University of Santo Tomas, with a degree in chemical engineering, magna cum laude. Chua's parents lived in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in World War II and were liberated by Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his troops.

Chua was raised as a Roman Catholic and lived in West Lafayette, Indiana. When she was 8 years old, her family moved to Berkeley, California.

Chua described herself as an "ugly kid" during her school days; she was bullied in school for her foreign accent (which she has since lost) and was the target of racial slurs from several classmates. Chua went to El Cerrito High School and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. in economics in 1984 from Harvard College, where she was named an Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholar and a John Harvard Scholar. She obtained her J.D. cum laude in 1987 from Harvard Law School, where she was the first Asian American officer of the Harvard Law Review, serving as executive editor. After law school, Chua clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Washington, D.C.

Books

Chua has written four books: two studies of international affairs, a parenting memoir, and her most recent on ethnic-American culture and its correlation with socio-economic success within the United States.

Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of "market dominant minorities" and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority. World on Fire, which was a New York Times bestseller, selected by The Economist as one of the Best Books of 2003, and named by Tony Giddens in The Guardian as one of the "Top Political Reads of 2003", examines how globalization and democratization since 1989 have affected the relationship between market-dominant minorities and the wider population.

Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall (2007), examines seven major empires and posits that their success depended on their tolerance of minorities.

Chua's third book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, published in January 2011, is a memoir about her parenting journey using strict Confucianist child rearing techniques, which she describes as being typical for Chinese immigrant parents. Although the book is often portrayed as a how-to manual for parenting, Chua herself describes it as "a complex account of how children can become rebellious and alienated when one-size-fits-all education philosophies are applied, regardless of their personality or aptitudes." The book was an international bestseller in the United States, South Korea, Poland, Israel, Germany, United Kingdom, and China, and has been translated into 30 languages. The book also received a huge backlash and media attention and ignited global debate about different parenting techniques and cultural attitudes that foster such techniques. Furthermore, the book provoked uproar after the release where Chua received death threats, racial slurs, and calls for her arrest on child-abuse charges. The book continues to be highly influential. In January 2016, David Cameron praised "Tiger Mothers", stating "It is what the Tiger Mothers' battle hymn is all about: work, try hard, believe you can succeed, get up and try again."

Her latest book, co-written with husband Jed Rubenfeld, is The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (published in February 2014). The book received positive reviews from a number of sources. Lucy Kellaway, writing for Financial Times, called it "the best universal theory of success I've seen." The Guardian commended the book for "draw[ing] on eye-opening studies of the influence of stereotypes and expectations on various ethnic and cultural groups ... The authors' willingness to pursue an intellectual inquiry that others wouldn't is bracing." The book was also criticized because of what some described as cultural stereotyping. An empirical study by Joshua Hart and Christopher F. Chabris found that "There was little evidence for the Triple Package theory."

Chua also appears in author J. D. Vance's memoir and bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy. Chua's student at Yale, Vance wrote that she gave him "the best advice anyone has ever given me." Vance wrote in his acknowledgments, "Besides Tina, the person who deserves the most credit for this book's existence is Amy Chua, my Yale contracts professor, who convinced me that both my life and the conclusions I drew from it were worth putting down on paper." Vance credits Chua as the "authorial godmother" of Hillbilly Elegy.

Personal life

Chua lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and is married to Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld. She has two daughters, Sophia and Louisa ("Lulu"); Louisa is currently studying History at Harvard College, while Sophia graduated in 2015 and is currently attending Yale Law School and was commissioned as an officer in the US military; Chua, whose husband is Jewish, has stated that her children can speak Mandarin Chinese (Chua herself speaks Hokkien), and they have been "raised Jewish". Her daughters have stated that they would raise their children the same way they were raised, though with more allowance for their children's individuality.

Chua is the eldest of four sisters: Michelle, Katrin, and Cindy. Katrin is a physician and a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. Cindy, who has Down syndrome, holds two International Special Olympics gold medals in swimming.