In an interview on Being a Mother

Finally, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a bestselling memoir by Dave Eggers about raising his younger brother, who is eight when he is orphaned. I can see the parallels, but please make clear to us what this memoir has to do with mothering.

I read this book 10 years ago and just loved it. It’s a memoir, but not exactly. That’s actually how I would describe my own book. Eggers is a flawed character in this book, an unreliable narrator. I’ve always loved books with unreliable narrators. When you can’t believe everything the narrator is saying, you have to read between the lines to understand what is going on.

His mother and father died within five weeks of each other, and at 21 he finds himself a single parent in charge of his eight-year-old brother. If you read the book, on its surface it’s very unsentimental and self-incriminating. Eggers describes trying to pick up women at PTA meetings; he describes food fights and dirty laundry everywhere. But if you read between the lines, it’s clear how much he loves his brother and how hard he tries to be a good parent.

Most people compare my book to “Mommy Dearest”, but it’s Eggers that I tried to emulate. This book was the model for my book. I thought my book would be received as a self-satirising memoir, not a manual. But it got caught up in a parenting debate and the debate took on a life of its own. I don’t think there is a major review that got my book as I intended it to be received. It’s interesting to me that no one misunderstood his book.

But Eggers overtly mentions in his foreword and narrative that his memoir is somewhat fictionalised. Do you wish you’d done the same? Apparently your title wasn’t a broad enough hint.

Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother just seemed so over the top to me that I thought anyone who opened the book would already get it. But the title that people knew first was the one that someone assigned to an excerpt in The Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”. I think the way it was framed (as a how-to and Chinese-versus-Western mothers) just made it difficult for people to read the book the way I hoped it would be received. 

Right from the opening, my book is filled with contradictions.  So I thought that people would read between the lines. On page four I write, “I think people who believe in astrology have serious problems” and then in the same paragraph I say that the Chinese Zodiac describes my daughters and me perfectly. There are points where I’m applying Chinese parenting techniques to my dogs. I thought readers would understand that it was hyperbolic self-parody.

So your daughter didn’t really read Sartre and understand set theory at three?

Oh my God, no! I think I give away in the next paragraph that reading Sartre meant recognising the words “No Exit”, and understanding set theory meant that she could scribble overlapping circles.

I’d like to read you one quote from Eggers’ memoir and get your reaction. He wrote: "We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something… like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul." Why did you bare yourself by writing Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother? Wasn’t it a very un-Chinese choice?

It was very un-Chinese to write this book, my mother pointed that out. My mother actually loved the book but she was really afraid for me. She said, you’re going to get in trouble. And, of course, my mother is always right. 

How did your daughters feel about the book?

They almost co-wrote it. They read every page and they corrected all the dialogue. I ran everything through all three people in my household. I seriously considered postponing publication until after my youngest was out of high school, but my daughters wouldn’t have it.

After the firestorm started, I thought: oh my God, because of my hubris my kids are going to suffer and my family is going to fall apart. But they weathered the storm so admirably. Their friends, teachers and our entire community supported them. And they supported me. My younger daughter Lulu, who is only 15, spends spare time cruising the Internet for positive quotes and texts them to me, saying, “Here’s a good one Mommy, hang in there.”

My older daughter, Sophia, started her own blog, even though her father and I objected. One more thing people miss about the book is they think it’s just about strict parenting; but it’s also about the value of rebellion. We said, “No blog! You’re going to get attacked.” But she is very strong-minded and so far, it’s been fine. I really do have two great girls.