Interview with Amy Chua
Amy Chua is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes.
Memoirs & Mentorship
Contents
Max Raskin: I wanted to start with talking about memoirs and mentorship. What were some of the memoirs that influenced you or that you go back to?
Amy Chua: I literally have never read a memoir before.
MR: Really?
AC: Yes. So when I wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, which I guess is a species of memoir, I didn't exactly think of it as a memoir. I obviously got this completely wrong, but I thought it was such a higher form of literature that I was doing. I love unreliable narrators. If you asked me what my model was for that book, other people would say Mommie Dearest, but it was actually Nabokov's Pale Fire.
MR: Really?
AC: Yes. Because I love unreliable narrators. When my editor Ann Godoff bid for it, she said to me that the genre was sui generis. But she said the best way she could describe it is as a love letter to my daughters. And I don't know if she was playing me or whatever, but she got me at that.
Of course I knew that I was recounting stories from my own life, but I made myself kind of a villainous character — not entirely ungrounded. And if you read the book carefully, you'll see that my two daughters are definitely the protagonists. They always get all the best lines. It's very comical actually.
MR: Who were some of the mentors in your life?
AC: My father and mother. Especially my father. He’s my big-picture mentor. Academically, Bruce Ackerman, Don Horowitz, Harold Koh, and Tony Kronman helped me a lot in my career.
MR: You famously were a mentor to JD Vance.
AC: Oh yeah, he wrote Hillbilly Elegy as a paper for my class.
MR: Do you have any other students who produced something like that? Where their life story just knocked your socks off?
AC: Oh, yes.
Every year I actually have quite a lot of students whose books may be published. Because a lot of these people who make it here to Yale Law School have very interesting backgrounds.
The Yale Law School
MR: Is your class a class for gunners? Do people go to your class because they want to be vice president? Are you a bit like Guido Calabresi who just has a stable of incredibly prominent former students and acolytes?
AC: Not really. My class does get a lot of very ambitious people because I'm very active in clerkships still on both sides of the political spectrum. But I love my classes because they're very eclectic. Believe it or not, I get a lot of people who just feel like outsiders, and that can include anybody. A lot of immigrants, a lot of first generation professionals, people from Appalachia — but also people who just immigrated here from Sudan. And so my class is famous for being unusually diverse. When people walk into my class…
MR: …what class specifically are we talking about?
AC: I teach “International Business Transactions” and something called “Advanced Contracts,”, but the titles of those courses are completely deceptive. I actually talk about markets, democracy, and ethnicity. I will assign critical race pieces along with really conservative pieces and make everybody write reaction papers.
So I have a lot of Federalist Society students in the same class whereas I have really progressive students of color. And because the class is not a topic like constitutional law which is really charged, but it's advanced contracts, we can actually talk about a whole range of fascinating topics. It'll be feisty and lively, but people don't quite want to kill each other.
MR: The joke about Yale Law School is that you’ll learn everything about law except how to practice it. Do you feel like that’s true?
AC: There’s some truth to that. But I think everybody, whether they like me or not, would agree that I'm sort of an unusual person here. I do teach straight black letter law. Everybody that takes my classes says, "Oh my God, I learned so much black letter law." But I bifurcate the class.
The class I’m teaching now, for example — the first hour is just black letter law. You're going to learn how to calculate contract damages and you're going to be able to pass the bar. And then the second half, I switch to these different schools of contract theory. Feminist theories to very conservative theories, like common good constitutionalism.
Unreliable Narrators
MR: You mentioned unreliable narrators — were you a fan of Rashomon? Are you a film fan at all?
AC: I'm so going to disappoint you. I'm really not an arty kind of sophisticated cultural person. My husband loves all that stuff. When I went to Harvard, I was a huge bookworm. When I was little — because we weren't really allowed to do fun things — I would go to the public library and come back with my arms loaded with books, but mostly novels.
When I went to Harvard, everybody else would go out to movies. I don't think I'd ever been to a movie. I was raised in a very strict immigrant household. I went to some movies with my parents, but I'd never gone with my friends to the movies before I got to college.
MR: Do you binge watch TV today at all?
AC: Oh, I'm so making up for lost time. For the last 10 years, I've binge watched everything.
MR: What are some of the shows you’ve binge watched?
AC: So predictable — Game of Thrones, Sopranos. We just did Slow Horses. You name it, we've done all the typical ones. I love it.
MR: Do you have the attention span to sit and watch movies?
AC: Yes. It's just that I was raised by the OG tiger parents. I actually let my kids see a lot of movies, but growing up I was in computer camp and math camp.
And I think there's a lot to be said for late bloomers. I've had so much fun once I started watching movies for real after law school.
My husband went to Juilliard for acting and is the opposite of me. He's watched every movie, including all the New York City artsy, Angelika Film Center movies.
MR: There’s this funny video of people who have never seen Star Wars trying to explain Star Wars just from the cultural ether. Was that you? Did you feel like you were missing something culturally?
AC: No. I wasn't deprived or anything. I got to see the big ones — I saw Star Wars. But like Francois Truffaut, Wim Wenders — I didn't see any of that stuff. And when I later started watching some of those, some I thought were really cool and others, I just felt like emperor's new clothes — it’s not doing anything for me. I'm a very practical person.
Tiger Moms and Jewish Mothers
MR: What’s the difference between an Asian Tiger Mom and a Jewish Mother? I guess this sounds like the set-up to a joke.
AC: I think some Jewish mothers are tiger moms. First of all, a tiger mom is very different from a helicopter mom. There are some overlaps. You spend a lot of time worrying about your kids, so you have that in common. But I would say that a lot of these very, very involved, helicopter-y moms want to make things easier for their children. They will take away obstacles. Oh, you can't finish your paper? Let me help you. I'll do it. I'll get you a tutor.
A real hardcore tiger mom basically puts up obstacles. It's like a training course. We're going to make it harder for you. You have to take the hardest classes. And we always take the teacher's side. You have a complaint against your teacher because they put something unfair on the test? Too bad. Do better next time.
Jewish parents from the 1920s and 30s were almost exactly the same as Asian American tiger parents in the 90s. When those Jews came over, they couldn't speak English and knew they needed to survive. We've just come from the shtetls. So you need to be a physicist or a doctor. And for Jews lawyer was okay. But my Chinese immigrant parents were like, "What? Lawyer? No." They didn't know what that was.
But if in the 1930s you said you wanted to be a poet or a standup comic, Jewish parents would be like, "Are you kidding?" Look at who the greatest musicians were. The greatest pianists and violinists — they were all Jewish. But you see that over the generations things change. That first generation is so tough with their kids because survival is on the line. So often the parents are very overbearing and they want their kids to do practical things, even if it's like being an accountant or ideally a doctor.
MR: Something like overalls to overalls in three generations, right?
AC: Yes. I can often tell from my students what generation they are and what kind of parents they had.
Feng Shui
MR: Do you personally have a religious practice?
AC: I was raised Catholic. My mom's parents were Buddhist, but she was converted to Catholicism by Jesuits after the Second World War in the Philippines. So my sisters and I were actually raised Catholic. I actually really like religion. I don't really practice it anymore, but I always found it very beautiful.
MR: Do you believe in God?
AC: I do — weirdly — but in a very strange, idiosyncratic way. I don't like to think about it too much because my brain starts to hurt. It's hard to know how much is believing in God and how much is superstitiousness because I also follow all the Feng Shui rules. But I think I would say that I am a believer.
MR: What's an example of the Feng Shui rules that you follow?
AC: No fours in my life. The number four means death. And eights everywhere. Eight is a good luck number. And just so bizarrely, my birthday is 10/26/62, which adds up to all eights. My Social Security number has all eights in it (coincidentally).
My house also definitely doesn't violate any Feng Shui rules.
MR: Are you a very organized person?
AC: I am a very disciplined person. I keep lots of lists. But I'm such a messy eater. Our table's messy.
MR: What about your inbox?
AC: I am very organized. I respond systematically to everything.
MR: Do you believe in an afterlife?
AC: I don't like to think about it. I am somebody that doesn't like to get depressed. I'm the opposite of my husband. I just like to be happy. If I get bogged down into that stuff…I hate thinking about death. I'm very immature that way.
Thinking in the Morning, Emailing in the Afternoons
MR: You have an immense amount of energy. Do you have a difficult time sitting still? Are you always doing something?
AC: Yes.
I have zero sleep problems. I am the best sleeper. I fall asleep every night — maybe because I'm so exhausted — the second my head hits the pillow. I can piece sleep together. I always get a good night's sleep.
MR: What time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up?
AC: I go to bed so early. Sometimes I fall asleep at 9:00, but I get up at 4:30, 5:00.
MR: Do you have a morning routine?
AC: Yes. It varies, but now that I'm writing a book, I have to have a very loose mind. It's a work of fiction right now. In the morning, sometimes when I wake up, I will just type stuff into my phone because I'm very loose. I don't have writer's block like when I stare at a computer.
My routine lately has been: I run five miles with the dog around 6:30. Then I come back and I get a cup of coffee and I will basically do the task that requires the most brain power and creativity. So writing is my morning. And then as the day goes on, I turn to tasks that require less and less brain power. So I'll answer emails. At times when I have to write letters of recommendation, I do the recommendation in the morning because I want those to be really good. Anything that I am prioritizing and I feel like I need to hit it out of the park, I do that first thing with a cup of coffee.
Confessions of Chua
MR: Just speaking about letters of recommendation, if you could have clerked for any judge throughout history, who would it have been?
AC: So I am very an odd person to be teaching at a law school because while I did clerk for a wonderful judge on the D.C. Circuit (she married my husband and me), I always knew I didn't want to be a litigator. I hate constitutional law.
I write about markets, democracy, and ethnic conflict. I am not like most of the lawyers you have interviewed. I don't have a favorite jurist. I don't love reading law review articles. I'm definitely not a constitutional law person. Another one of my favorite books with another unreliable narrator, the Confessions of Zeno.
MR: I know nothing about this.
AC: I think I'm a really good law teacher, but I'm not a litigator. And I don't love constitutional law.
MR: Do you ever advise your students not to clerk?
AC: All the time. They're so happy. I can pretty much tell within 10 minutes of seeing a student whether they actually should clerk or not. And sometimes I'll be like, "Okay, I know you really want to do this, and I will support you, but I don't think it's going to help your career." And sometimes they listen to me and sometimes they don't. But I'm always right.
MR: Really?
AC: Yeah.
MR: Should I have clerked?
AC: I don't think so. You seem to have your own thing.
MR: I clerked on the Southern District of New York for Judge Preska, so it was very fun. It was really good for me.
AC: I’ve sent people to her!
My two daughters both clerked and they loved their clerkships. They’re like their father. Most of my colleagues at Yale would say clerking was the most amazing year of their life. And I'm just this oddball. I hate administrative law. I clerked for all the wrong reasons.
I was the only Asian in my section at Harvard, and I had a chip on my shoulder. I was going to prove to people I could do it. So I learned a lot. I loved my judge. She terrified me, but I learned. But it didn't really help my career, and I didn't really enjoy the material.
Tiger Music
MR: Music is very important to this tiger mom mentality. Do you ever play an instrument today?
AC: No. I hope I don't sound too crazy, but a lot of my life has occurred in stages. When I started doing this tiger parenting with my kids, I was obsessed with the piano and the violin. We did so much. I spent eight hours a day, drilling both of them. But now that they're both graduated from law school, we're all doing different things. I'm mostly focused on writing books right now. Mentoring my students, teaching, and writing my book is what I really love to do. Plus I run a lot.
MR: Do you listen to music when you run?
AC: I do listen to music, actually.
MR: What do you listen to when you run?
AC: Believe it or not, I like country music. I have strange playlists. I like non-neurotic music.
MR: What's non-neurotic music?
AC: Country music. I have Sturgill Simpson here. Jamie Wyatt.
MR: What's your favorite Sturgill Simpson song?
AC: “Mercury in Retrograde” and “Turtles All the Way Down.”
Post Malone is another one.
Normie?
MR: Are you a weird person who can act normal or are you a fundamentally normal person who is weird?
AC: Great question. I am definitely a very weird person who can act normal. I think I have pretty high EQ, so I can function. But I'm a very weird person.
MR: And are you a high-brow person who has low-brow tastes or are you fundamentally a low-brow person who works in high-brow places?
AC: High-brow, low-brow is interesting. I think I would say that I am very naturally nondiscriminatory when it comes to taste. When we go to a restaurant my husband is always complaining about the seat or that the place smells funny. I have never, never been to a hotel that I didn't like. I have never been to a restaurant that I didn't like. I've never gotten a dish that I didn't like. So I guess that makes me low-brow. I just love all pastas. I love all food. I have no allergies.
MR: So in some ways you very much go with the flow?
AC: Well, that's why it's complicated. I hate cliches. I hate predictability. I tend to be very judgy when people at dinner parties just start talking about all these opinions that I can tell they just got them from the New York Times opinion page.
MR: You may not want to share this but what’s a non-political opinion you have that you really don't talk about ever?
AC: You mean just something unusual?
MR: Yeah, like do you believe in UFOs?
AC: I do have opinions. I am very Tiger Mommy. I think the role of shame is very interesting. It’s viewed as very negative in Western society. There's an interesting role for making someone feel shame. I would say I have a lot of contrarian ideas that I keep under wraps.
MR: Really?
AC: Oh, yeah. I would say I have very, very few mainstream ideas.
MR: You're not normie.
AC: No, I think I'm pretty weird.
MR: Do you feel like you're not depressed enough to be a novelist?
AC: If you're depressed, then you can't crank out the pages.
MR: But Hemingway and David Foster Wallace were depressed they would crank it out.
AC: No, you're right. You're right. Some of the best stuff.
MR: Maybe they're manic depressives.
I feel I know the answer to this: Have you done therapy?
AC: No.
MR: Yeah, I knew the answer.
AC: I think it can be incredibly useful though.
MR: Have you ever had a student that has killed themselves?
AC: Yes.
MR: What was that like?
AC: I didn't know the student very well, but it was terrible. She was in my class one day and then I read about it.
MR: Do students come to you with mental health questions?
AC: I've helped a lot of students. I feel pretty good about that. I am not a professional. And of course if there's a really serious problem, it's not for me. But you would not believe the people who now seem like really famous, well-adjusted people that I helped through difficult times.
JD Vance
MR: All these ambitious people that find themselves attracted to you, what is the piece of advice that you would impart to them?
AC: Just make it through one more day. It will pass.
Also: Who cares? If a person made you feel bad, they're a loser.
MR: Did JD know he wanted to be a senator and vice president or was his ambition more nebulous?
AC: A lot of people say he's completely changed, but he's very much the same person in my mind. He's a guy that's always been searching and a guy with really a lot of brilliance.
MR: You think it was in him from the beginning?
AC: I don't know, but I remember giving a toast at his book party saying that I could see him in the White House.