Musically gifted, intelligent, successful.

If you’re of this era, then you’re probably rather familiar with the Asian stereotype. So is Amy Chua. In fact, if you pick up her newly-released novel, she’ll be happy to tell you all about it.

Chua, a self-proclaimed Chinese mother, recently made waves this January with her new novel, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, her account on what it’s really like to raise two such stereotypically successful children. And if the first chapters sound vaguely familiar, it’s because they were released early as part of a promotional excerpt by the Wall Street Journal under the immediately provocative headline, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”.

And what an opening—to the book’s arrival and to the ensuing widespread debate—that was. Before she even goes into the details, Chua lays down the rules for her Highly Successful Chinese Parenting. No sleepovers, no play dates, TV or computer games. More importantly, Chua’s children, Sophia and Louisa—referred to affectionately as Lulu—were not allowed to choose their own extracurricular activities.

For Chua, choice is a “Western” thing, not at all suited to her purposes. She explains that the Asian philosophy deems children as extensions of their parents. They owe their parents their lives, and so they do what they are told.

But you know all of that, correct? That’s another part of the stereotypical Asian mindset. Especially that part where any grade below an A is unacceptable.

As could have been predicted, the excerpt alone garnered a record number of reader responses and sparked an ongoing debate, and after reading just a bit more of Chua’s full novel, it’s easy to see why.

The premise of “Tiger Mother” is, as the cover blurb states, to report how a firecracker Chinese mother at the top of her game, so to speak, retreats from her strict parenting after her more rebellious younger daughter teaches her a lesson about moderation.

Does Chua achieve this? It depends on how you look at it. If one reads only the words, without giving any thought to tone or intent, then absolutely. But when tone does enter the picture, then “Tiger Mother” becomes the unwitting portrait of denial.

Because although Chua sings like a bird about the virtues that she’s learned—that she’s going to let up on her ridiculously strict parenting so that her child can have the simple choice of what activity to pursue—she, in the end, proves to have learned a paltry little.

And part of that little is learning that her dogs are just dogs.

You heard right. Chua, upon getting her first dogs, tries to make the poor animals as successful as her children, researching their intelligence, enrolling one in dog school. Some lukewarm success later, Chua concludes that though her dogs are not ‘trained’ or ‘exceptional’, they’re happy just being dogs.

Anyone who has to take years to realize that has problems.

Worse, though, Chua apparently can’t take that lesson and translate it to her daughters, whom she pushes even harder. The hours of music practice multiply, the pressure heightens, and so does the stress. And so, to an extent, is the success.

Every step of the way, Chua’s words are coated with self-assurance, to the point where sometimes it’s hard to tell who she’s trying to convince. The starkest incidents, such as “The Birthday Card”—in which Chua rejects the hastily-scrawled cards that her children present to her—are often followed by some sort of comment in which Chua tries to make the situation seem better. She inserts sentences describing how her children are better off, happier, or, my personal favorite, that they’ll thank her in the future.

When such things pop up at the ridiculously high frequency at which they do, it’s hard to believe that Chua learned anything at all.

Do your homework and you’ll realize that Chua wrote a response to the readers who replied to the excerpt in the Wall Street Journal.

In it, she stated that were she to do it all over again, she would only change minor things. She of course covers her bases by saying that the so-called “Chinese approach” isn’t for everyone.

Hold on. Is forcing one’s daughter to sit at the piano for hours, without food, water, rest, even bathroom breaks, until said daughter finally plays the piece correctly, good for anyone? Don’t forget the screaming war zone that Chua reported as well—her voice was reported to have faded some as she shouted the hours away, to the consternation of her daughter forced to remain at the piano.

The episode referred to is known now as the infamous “Little White Donkey” incident, named after the piece that Chua’s daughter Lulu was supposed to be learning.

As aforementioned, the incident was followed by a whopper of a self-indulgent comment; the scene in which Lulu “wouldn’t leave the piano” once she got the previously elusive rhythm and the comment that mother and daughter snuggled in bed together that night, the rough previous hours seemingly forgotten.

We come to the question at the heart of it all. Sure, Chua was successful. For a while. After all, there aren’t a lot of ways to describe a mother who pushes her older daughter so hard that she reaches Carnegie Hall by eighth grade, so hard that her younger daughter scores the attentions of a private teacher at Juilliard.

But we also use the term “successful” quite loosely. Because although both girls became the envy of their peers through their musical gifts, there is no denying the appalling behind-the-scenes picture that got them there, which is an absolute mess.

Is the mess; that is, the grueling hours of practicing, even while on vacation—sometime at the expense of the vacation itself—worth it? It sure seems that Chua is the real worker behind both girls’ success. Their instruments were chosen for them when they were only a few years old. And so while the girls are vessels, Chua can be seen living almost vicariously through her children, pushing them to their absolute limits.

That’s not to say that she didn’t see results. She did. And they were wonderful. But the fact remains that she chose and set her children’s lives herself, without a thought to their own opinions. And then she wonders why Lulu, her virtuoso violinist, chose to give up her concertmaster position, her spot with her famous teacher, and her years of hard work.

For as long as we are on this Earth, generation after generation of parents will continuously fret as to how best raise their children. A parent’s biggest fear, it seems, will always be failure.

But Chua’s book is the testament to the fact that parenting can be taken too far.

Let us bring the discussion back to the hordes of successful Asian children, then. Are they really successful? Is a life of mindlessly following a parent’s increasing demands necessarily worth all that?

No.

This is not to discount those Asian children that are successful by themselves, without monstrous parenting. As with every nationality, there are those lucky few. But the Asian overdrive that effuses from the rest should be looked at as a warning.

You don’t have to be Chua’s stereotypical “Western Parent” who gives their child Lego sets in order to get them to practice the piano. But you don’t have to threaten to take all their toys and burn them if they don’t get the piece perfectly, and you don’t have to call them “garbage” for good measure.

Can there be no happy medium? Chua herself is working towards one. Her book, though it shows that she has a long, long way to go, shows that even in the Asian household, there is room for improvement.

Bottom line? I recommend wholeheartedly that you read Chua’s memoir, if only to find out where you stand in your own working mindset. Chua has stated that it’s not meant to be a parenting book, which is good; no child should have to endure what Sophia and Lulu did, and probably still do, despite all of Chua’s baby steps.

What’s more, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is a quick and easy read that should take no more than a couple of hours to breeze through. That’s fine, though, because you’ll probably spend the next few hours in deep thought and self-reflection. If nothing else, America’s new favorite Tiger Mother knows how to spark a debate sitting one spot from the top the New York Time’s Bestsellers list.