Before 2011, Amy Chua would have described herself as a “mild mannered professor.” She was teaching law at Yale University and raising her two daughters.
“Nobody knew who I was, I had never been on major TV — I didn’t even have a Facebook,” says Chua. “And suddenly, overnight, there were headlines: ‘Most Hated Mother on the Planet!’”
Amy Chua
“A lot of people were talking about it without having read it. Part of the problem is that the Wall Street Journal excerpted some of the most provocative parts that are now famous, and a lot of people only read the excerpt,” says Chua in an interview with Diverse. “If you actually read the book, you realize that it gets really complicated. It’s much more reflective.”
More than a decade has passed since Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother changed the shape of Chua’s and her family’s lives, years peppered by other conflicts and controversies. In 2018, Chua and her husband, fellow Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld, were investigated for allegedly telling students to dress like models for a better chance at winning a clerkship with Brett Kavanaugh, now a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In response to those allegations, Chua agreed to end out-of-class time with students but was accused of breaking that agreement by hosting student dinners, which Chua has denied.
Becoming a novelist
But despite these controversies, Chua has persevered. She has learned, grown, and chased the dreams of her younger self by finally becoming a novelist. Her book, The Golden Gate, released in September 2023, is both historical fiction and a mystery, a blend of Chua’s varied interests. While this fictional story may seem disparate from her earlier, nonfictional works, Chua says she has found a unifying theme connecting them: the perspective of an outsider.
