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 Growing up under “Tiger Mother” can be rewarding. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, the eldest daughter of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” author Amy Chua, recently gave the commencement address at her high school graduation. 
 
 Confirmed by someone in the audience, Chua-Rubenfeld was valedictorian and made several jokes during the speech, poking gentle fun at her mom, who has been the subject of immense criticism and praise this year for her parenting methods. 
 
 A source told The Daily Caller that Chua-Rubenfeld opened the address with a joke about her mom’s New York Times bestselling memoir. 
 
 “Instead of writing her own speech, she [told audience members] that she was going to read from her [favorite] book…’Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,'” the source told TheDC of Chua-Rubenfeld’s address. 
 
 According to the source, Chua-Rubenfeld’s school only chose one valedictorian for the class of 2010-2011, and students determined who had earned that title. 
 
 “The only other student speaker was the class president who spoke as salutatorian,” says the source. 
 
 (TheDC Interview: ‘Tiger Mother’ Amy Chua speaks out, wins teaching award) 
 
 Earlier this year, Chua-Rubenfeld started a personal blog to chronicle her daily life and “set the record straight” on rumors about her family. The teenager, who applied to Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, hinted in an April blog entry that she’d decided on Harvard. 
 
 During a Q&A post about the university she’d picked, Chua-Rubenfeld wrote, “Somewhere wicked awesome,” using a popular word among Massachusetts residents. 
 
 Earlier this year, Chua made Time magazine’s 2011 list of the world’s most influential people and brought her husband and girls to the gala. Chua, a Yale law professor, came under fire after the January release of her book, which was intended to be a satirical take on rigid Asian parenting. In January, an excerpt of Chua’s memoir appeared in the Wall Street Journal and readers almost immediately went after the academic scholar with pitchforks for promoting strict child-rearing techniques. 
 
 In the piece, Chua said her daughters were forbidden from having sleepovers, participating in play dates, and earning anything less than an “A.” Chua later explained to TheDC that she’d intended for her book to read like a self-deprecating David Sedaris memoir rather than a parenting guide as some assumed. 
 
 Follow Laura on Twitter ||||| Amy Chua calls herself a "Tiger Mother" because of her strict parenting methods that didn't allow for play dates, sleepovers or choice in extra-curricular activities for her two daughters. 
 
 But her essay in the Wall Street Journal has made her one of the most talked-about – and criticized mothers – in the blogosphere. 
 
 On January 8, the newspaper published excerpts of her book in an article titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." The Internet erupted in a firestorm of outrage over the piece, in which she described how she belitted one daughter -- calling her "garbage," and threatened to withhold food and bathroom breaks from the other if the 7-year-old didn't play the piano perfectly. 
 
 The outrage is so intense that Chua has even gotten death threats, according to reports. 
 
 Author: Book Is Not a Parenting Guide 
 
 Speaking with ABC News on Sunday, Chua reiterated that her book was not a how-to guide to parenting, but a memoir on her experience as a parent. 
 
 "My book is a memoir, not a parenting book! I think there are many ways to raise great kids," Chua said. 
 
 The controversy over Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," heated up further on Saturday when Ayelet Waldman, a Jewish author and mother, responded with her essay, entitled "In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom." 
 
 Waldman's essay humorously outlines differences between what she sees as the lackadaisical approach taken by western mothers and the strict regimen Chinese mothers use on their children that Chua discusses. 
 
 The first Wall Street Journal piece, which took excerpts from Chua's parenting memoir "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," ignited a heated debate across the Internet, with critics claiming that the book advocates abusive parenting, while others asserted that it would lead to xenophobia and feed China haters. 
 
 Aided by the controversy, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" reached the No. 6 slot in the Amazon sales rankings on Tuesday, the day it was released. 
 
 In her response to Chua's piece, Waldman, author of "The Mommy-Track Mysteries" series of novels and the wife of best-selling novelist Michael Chabon, jokingly tells of allowing her children to quit the piano and the violin to spare her from attending boring recitals while letting them sleep over at their friend's houses to save money on babysitters. 
 
 Chua Clarifies WSJ Article 
 
 Yet her tone gets more serious when she describes how she let her daughter know her disappointment when her report card didn't have straight-As -- though this was without the "screaming, hair-tearing explosion" that Chua described in a similar situation. 
 
 "The difference between Ms. Chua and me, I suppose -- between proud Chinese mothers and ambivalent Western ones -- is that I felt guilty about having berated my daughter for failing to deliver the report card I expected," Waldman wrote. "I was ashamed at my reaction." 
 
 Waldman, 46, goes on to describe how her daughter Rosie overcame mild dyslexia and learned to read using a special intensive reading program that she was not pressured by her parents into taking, but chose to struggle through on her own. 
 
 Rosie's struggle and ability to overcome her dyslexia on her own left her parents "stunned with pride," Waldman says. 
 
 Waldman, who is also the author of the memoir "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace," told of her reaction to Chua's Wall Street Journal piece and the fact that every author need to remain accountable for what they write. 
 
 "I think it's important when you write something like this that you own all parts of it. Having gone through my own trial of fire with the media on motherhood issues … You can't back away from it. You can say this is me, this is what I wrote, but if you want to get the whole story, buy the book," Waldman told ABC News. 
 
 "You don't see her journey [in the Wall Street Journal piece], you don't see her transformation. I think there's surely more to the story there," Waldman said. 
 
 Meanwhile, Chua, 48, responded to and clarified what the Wall Street Journal published. 
 
 Chua Acknowledges Mistakes 
 
 In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Chua stated that the Wall Street Journal's article strung together the most controversial sections of her book and failed to highlight that the book is a memoir about a personal journey of motherhood. 
 
 "I was very surprised," she told the Chronicle's Jeff Yang. "They didn't even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model." 
 
 "I'm not going to retract my statements about Chinese parenting. But I'd also note that I'm aware now of the limitations of that model -- that it doesn't incorporate enough choice. 
 
 "I now believe there's a hybrid way of parenting that combines the two paradigms, but it took me making a lot of mistakes along the way to get there," said Chua. 
 
 Waldman's point of view on parenting, it turns out, is actually somewhat similar to where Chua landed after her parenting journey. 
 
 "Sometimes when I try to use a stern attitude -- 'I'm your mother and you will do what I say' -- it doesn't work as much. Sometimes I provide as much emotional support as I can -- and sometimes that works. 
 
 "I sort of throw everything that I can at the problem, and hope that something will work out," Waldman said. 
 
 ABC News' Suzan Clarke contributed to this report. 
 
 Click here to return to the "Good Morning America" website. ||||| Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom" has set off a fiery debate over the merits of Western versus Asian parenting styles. Jeff Yang jumps into the flames -- and talks to the author who ignited them 
 
 If you're Asian American -- or if you have close Asian friends -- you know that a staple of Asian American humor is stories about over-the-top maternal expectations and demands. Black folks tell "yo momma" jokes; Asian folks tell "my momma" jokes. 
 
 That's because for many Asian Americans, the path to adulthood is a sustained, multi-decade-long three-legged race, in which mom drags offspring through a furious gauntlet of piano lessons and college prep, violin lessons and more college prep, disappointment and anger and blowups and reconciliation and then more college prep. 
 
 We survivors commonly call this the "Crazy Asian Mom" phenomenon. 
 
 Always lovingly, of course. And never to her face. 
 
 I was reminded of my own archive of Crazy Asian Mom stories last Saturday, when the Wall Street Journal published a purported excerpt from the book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," by Yale law professor Amy Chua. (I'll explain the "purported" part later.) 
 
 The resulting essay, provocatively titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," reads like a strident assertion of the benefits of Crazy Asian Mom parenting -- and a blunt indictment of Western childrearing ideals. In it, Chua suggests that Chinese parents are able to raise "stereotypically successful" kids -- math whizzes and music prodigies -- by following a regimen that includes banning social interaction (playdates, sleepovers) and nonessential activities (TV, videogames, sports, arts other than music, music other than piano or violin). She asserts the value of rote repetition and strict discipline; dismisses concepts like fun, self-actualization and self-esteem as fraudulent distractions; and advocates absolute and unilateral parental control, without concern over whether kids are happy in the here and now (because true happiness only comes when one has accomplished long-term goals and achieved lasting success). 
 
 As you might imagine, the essay has become the Andromeda Strain of viral memes, proliferating wildly across the blogosphere, Twitscape and Facespace. It has blazed a particularly fiery path across the extended network of digital Asian America, where it's been forwarded and reforwarded again and again, consuming all other conversation in its wake. 
 
 And the reaction from Asian Americans who've read it has been surprisingly uniform: Disbelief and rage, punctuated by blinding flashbacks to their own repressed, oppressive youth. 
 
 "A+" is for Asian 
 
 "I received a thousand e-mails about the article, and when I finally read it, I went through a brief episode of PTSD," says Lac Su, whose memoir of his own tormented Asian American childhood, "I Love Yous Are for White People," was published to broad acclaim in 2009. In his case, PTSD, which stands for post-traumatic stress disorder, could easily mean "parental trauma stress disorder." His parents, thinking he was "slow," subjected him to hours of supplemental tutoring -- and when he still failed to meet their standards, tried a different kind of intellectual supplement, making him eat an entire cow brain every Saturday until he was eight years old. 
 
 Su compares the passing down of Crazy Asian Mom -- er, Tiger Mother -- techniques to the cycle of child violence. "When kids are abused by their parents, they pass that abusive behavior down to their own kids without knowing," he says -- adding that he has vowed never to spank or even to get angry at his own two kids as a result (and also noting that he showers them with "I love yous," belying the title of his book). 
 
 Su isn't alone in accusing Chua of "child abuse." The charge has been made both by those who experienced similar parenting firsthand and those who didn't but find the notion of requiring perfection from children and forcing them to drill for hours at a time to be barbaric -- even sadistic.
– Maybe the final, happy note in the Tiger Mom brouhaha? Amy Chua's daughter was valedictorian of her high school class, reports the Daily Caller. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld even poked a little fun at the controversy over mom's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother book, joking that she was going to read from it rather than give her own speech. If you missed the fury in January, critics read the book as an indictment of America's lax parenting and as a push for an über-strict alternative. Author Chua said they took what was meant to be a humorous, self-deprecating book way too seriously. Either way, things have worked out nicely for Sophia, who is apparently on her way to Harvard. Her blog is here.