ABSTRACT
In her highly controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua (2011), a Chinese American, described how she brought up her children in a traditional ‘Chinese’ way, a parenting style advocating strict discipline and obedience from children as well as sacrifi ce on the parents’ part. Her book also gives a vivid account of how she, as a second generation Chinese immigrant and wife of a Jewish husband, navigates and lives with intercultural differences at home and in society at large. In this chapter, we shall focus on two cases where crosscultural differences come into play perhaps at the most visible intensity, i.e. migrant families and intercultural couples who often fi nd themselves at the crossroads of differing family values, language ideologies, norms of interaction and identities. It will be useful if you could read Amy Chua’s book before reading the rest of the chapter (or the excerpts available on her website at https://amychua.com/) and preferably revisit her book after reading this chapter.
