Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Read Online Free PDF

not get asked back to meet the full Yale Law faculty, which meant that I’d flunked the lunch. In other words, I’d been rejected by Jed’s colleagues. This was not ideal—and it made socializing a little tricky.
    But then I got another huge break. When Sophia was two, Duke Law School gave me a teaching offer. Ecstatic, I accepted the offer immediately, and we moved to Durham, North Carolina.

8
     

     
    Lulu’s Instrument
     

     
    Lulu and her first violin
     
    I loved Duke. My colleagues were generous, kind, and smart, and we made many close friends. The only hitch was that Jed still worked at Yale, which was five hundred miles away. But we made it work, alternating some years between Durham and New Haven, with Jed doing most of the commuting.
    In 2000, when Sophia was seven and Lulu was four, I got a call from New York University Law School, inviting me to visit. I hated the idea of leaving Duke, but NewYork was a lot closer to New Haven, so we packed up and moved to Manhattan for six months.
    It was a stressful six months. To “visit” in the law teaching world is to join a faculty on a trial basis. It’s basically a semester-long interview where you try to impress everyone with how smart you are while sucking up to them at the same time. (“But I have a bone to pick with you, Bertram. Doesn’t your paradigm-shifting model actually have even more far-reaching implications than you thought?” Or: “I’m not sure I’m fully persuaded yet by footnote 81 of your ‘Law and Lacan’ article, which is downright dangerous—would you mind if I assigned it to my class?”)
    When it came to schools, Manhattan lived up to its hair-raising reputation. Jed and I were introduced to the world of third-graders prepping for the SAT and toddlers with trust funds and their own photography portfolios. In the end, we decided to send Sophia to a public school, P.S. 3, which was right across the street from the apartment we’d rented. For Lulu to get into preschool, though, she had to take a series of tests.
    At the preschool I most wanted Lulu to get in, which was in a beautiful church with stained-glass windows, the admissions director came back out with Lulu after just five minutes, wanting to confirm that Lulu could not count—not that there was anything wrong with that, but she just wanted to confirm.
    “Oh my goodness, of course she can count!” I exclaimed, horrified. “Give me just one second with her.”
    I pulled my daughter aside. “Lulu!” I hissed. “What are you doing ? This is not a joke.”
    Lulu frowned. “I only count in my head.”
    “You can’t just count in your head—you have to count out loud to show the lady you can count! She is testing you. They won’t let you into this school if you don’t show them.”
    “I don’t want to go to this school.”
    As already mentioned, I don’t believe in bribing children. Both the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have ratified international conventions against bribery; also, if anything, children should pay their parents. But I was desperate. “Lulu,” I whispered, “if you do this, I’ll give you a lollipop and take you to the bookstore.”
    I dragged Lulu back. “She’s ready now,” I said brightly.
    This time, the admissions director allowed me to accompany Lulu into the testing room. She put four blocks on the table and asked Lulu to count them.
    Lulu glanced at the blocks, then said, “Eleven, six, ten, four .”
    My blood ran cold. I thought about grabbing Lulu and making a run for it, but the director was calmly adding four more blocks to the pile. “How about now, Lulu—can you count those?”
    Lulu stared at the blocks a little longer this time, then counted, “Six, four, one, three, zero, twelve, two, eight .”
    I couldn’t stand it. “Lulu! Stop that—”
    “No, no—please.” The director put her hand up, an amused look on her face, and turned back to Lulu. “I can see, Louisa,