I’m putting a lot more trust in responses to Chua, from other Asian-Americans talking about their own experiences, than in Chua herself. Once the WSJ op-ed became That Thing On The Internet Everyone Was Talking About, she started walking back, saying that the WSJ quoted fragments of her book out of context. Then she told a newspaper columnist “I’m an unreliable narrator”, saying that the book as a whole was an exaggeration. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/13/...) So... what is really going on with Chua and her kids, not to mention her husband? About all I can safely infer is that the woman has, as they say, Issues.
she started walking back, saying that the WSJ quoted fragments of her book out of context
I haven't read the book, but I have seen evidence that the WSJ extracts were highly selective. In fact in the Guardian piece below, in which her children are also quoted, it says that she completely changed her approach when she realised the effect that it had. Her daughter is quoted as saying:
"The other day, I messed up a math test. I texted my mom that I got an A- and she replied, 'Who cares! Mummy loves u!'"
[Edit for those who don't want to read the linked article: The Guardian piece casts the book as a confessionary "these are the things I did because I thought they were right and boy, it just made my kids miserable so I stopped" rather than the WSJ-implied tone of "this is the way I raised my kids and you wussy Westerners should do it like this or be squashed"]
On the one hand, I have a low opinion of the WSJ editorial pages, so I want to believe that the editors crafted the op-ed to portray Chua in a way that reflects their own political and racial biases, rather than the image that Chua wanted to present of herself. (I know personally a family that signed up for one of those “reality TV” shows, and I cringe at how they were portrayed.) On the other hand, framing her this way appears to be helping her sales figures. Back on the first hand, would she have wanted to project this image of herself to a national audience just to spike her book sales?
I don't think Chua's initial excerpt actually said anything meaningful. It was like some sort of bizarre Rorschach test, that said very little, and upset a lot of people.
My point is, having read it the first time, i too went through the "yeah this kind of describes my childhood" thing, and then looked back at the claims, together with her caveats and noticed that there was precisely nothing one could take away from her article, except that it was an anecdote about her family, and how other people think she's a horrible person.
There was no generalizable information in her piece, and thus it was ultimately sort of an inconsequential, and self-satisfying fluff piece. What does amaze me, is the amount of time and effort dedicated to discussing her and what she's said. Given that i don't think the substance of her comments was worthy of such discussion, all i can figure is that she is controversial because of who she is and the style of the comments.
I think the original op-ed spoke on both a logical and emotional level. On the logical level, as you say, the caveats pretty much cancelled out any substantive arguments. On the emotional level, there was an overwhelming message of you Western slackers, if you do not browbeat your children into being #1 the way we Chinese do, your children will die homeless and penniless and ten pounds overweight.
And the emotional message strikes some pretty tender nerves for those millions who either are status-anxious about how their children will end up (think of all those upper-class New York parents angling to get their toddlers into The Right Preschool), or who was raised by someone with that kind of anxiety.
