How to Make Yourself a Villain

Step One: Have children.

Step Two: Ignore Oprah’s advice when raising them.

Step Three: Write a book about it.

Congratulations! You are now Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. For a brief period at the beginning of this year, Chua was the mother everybody loved to hate. It was because people were reading her essay in the WSJ, and they concluded from this that a) Chua was abusive and b) her book sucked.

I, not being one to take any conclusion as foregone, picked it up at the library to see if any of this was true. I’m about forty pages in now, and I have to say, Chua sounds like neither a monster nor a saint. The book itself is quite good, entertaining and breezily written, and Chua (so far) comes across as a parent like any, just trying to figure out the best way to get kids that don’t end up in prison . . . or at Cornell. (ZING.) I will keep you informed.