Tiger Babies Strike Back: How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom but Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side – A Forthright Autobiographical Response on Race

Tiger Babies Strike Back: How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom but Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side – A Forthright Autobiographical Response on Race

An answer to Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , author Kim Wong Keltner’s Tiger Babies Strike Back takes the control-freak beast by the tail with a humorous and honest look at the issues facing women today—Chinese-American and otherwise. Keltner, the author of the novels Buddha Baby and I Want Candy , mines her own past in an attempt to dispel the myth that all Chinese women are Tiger Mothers. Keltner strikes back at Chua’s argument through topics, including “East Meets West in the Board Room and the Bedroom,” and “I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom and All I Got Was this Lousy T-Shirt: A Rebuttal to Chua.” Through personal anecdotes and tough-love advice, Keltner’s witty and forthright opinions evoke an Asian-American Sex and the City, while showing how our families shape our personal worlds. Novelist Keltner (The Dim Sum of All Things, 2004) jumps on the Tiger Mother bandwagon with what is at its best a lighthearted look at growing up Chinese American. Packed with lots of saucy attitude, Keltner’s memoir reveals the pressure cooker that is life as a “tiger baby” and refutes much of the dogma related in Amy Chua’s controversial best-seller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). The book fumbles into incoherence at times, however, as it vascillates from cultural commentary to mothering memoir, and some of the content is repetitive. Keltner’s habit of dropping casual asides about her family can also be disconcerting as there seems to be little groundwork provided in some cases to support her opinions. Readers thus are buffeted from some truly amusing anecdotes about organizing play dates to questionable assertions about family dynamics, which makes for an uneven reading experience. However, it cannot be discounted that Kelner does challenge what was sold as prevailing orthodoxy among Chinese American families only two short years ago, and, as an attempt at literary balance, Tiger Babies is well worth a look. --Colleen Mondor It’s awesome to find such deep truth that makes you laugh this hard. - Beth Lisick, author of Everybody Into the Pool “Full of feisty humor. . . . Smart and sassy.” - USA Today “A sort of Asian American Sex in the City...like meeting someone who voices thoughts or experiences that you presumed were wholly yours...cynically humorous and genuinely touching...Keltner’s wry sens of humor leaps off every page.” - generationrice “A soul-searching journey into what it was like being raised by a Tiger Mom. This Tiger Baby could never quite measure up; as a mother now, she is determined not to make the same mistakes with her own daughter. Kim Wong Keltner’s witty, honest, warm voice takes the reader straight into the heart of a generation of Chinese immigrants. Look for emotional surprises as she discovers how deep her roots are planted even as she fights to make how own way through the motherhood maze.” - Maryann Bucknum Brinley, author of The 16 Secrets of Happy Parenting “An inspiring take on mothering -- and daughtering. The book is smart, creative, and thought-provoking.” - Linda Small, author of Wimpy Parents: How Not to Raise a Brat “The author writes with compassion, humor, love and anger about her mother’s combination of tough love and high expectations…A quirky reflection on the modern immigrant experience and hyphenated ethnicity in America.” - Kirkus Reviews Kim Wong Keltner is a Tiger Baby all grown up with a daughter of her own . . . but is she a Tiger Mother? Heck, no. This book describes—in hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking, detail—exactly why not. A battle hymn for every non-Tiger offspring of Tiger parents, Tiger Babies Strike Back examines why generations of kids have been made to feel inferior, isolated, suffocated, and humiliated in dogged pursuit of one goal: making their elders look good. In search of answers, Keltner delves into her own childhood, family history, and community traditions to expose the seamy underbelly of perfectionistic parenting. Can the Tiger-parented take back their emotional lives and love their own kids unconditionally? Keltner herself is living, hugging, fabulously flawed, Care Bear tea-party-throwing proof that they can. Traversing the choppy seas of American and Chinese traditions, Keltner dives into the difficulties facing women today—Chinese American and otherwise. At once deeply relevant and playfully honest, Tiger Babies Strike Back combines personal anecdotes and tough love advice for a humorous, provocative look at how our families shape—and sometimes shake—our personal foundations. The only thing that keeps Kim Wong Keltner from writing is when she’s trapped under an avalanche of her daughter’s stuffed animals. Keltner is the author of The Dim Sum of All Things, Buddha Baby, and I Want Candy. Tiger Babies Strike Back is her first work of nonfiction.