‘Tiger Mom’ Amy Chua writes first novel, ‘The Golden Gate’

Amy Chua, the Yale Law School professor and author sometimes known as “Tiger Mom,” has written her first novel. “The Golden Gate,” a murder mystery centered around a wealthy family in Berkeley, California in 1944, will come out Sept. 19.

Chua said in a statement released yesterday [Macau time] by St. Martin’s Publishing Group that she drew upon memories of growing up in El Cerrito, across the bay from “glamorous San Francisco.”

“As the daughter of immigrants who was often teased about my Chinese accent, slanty eyes, and funny clothes, I was acutely conscious of the gap between insiders and outsiders, haves and have-nots, in a state shaped by constant waves of migration and the lure of a better life,” Chua said.

“I wove my story around actual events, like the Japanese American internment, labor unrest in the shipyards where America’s battleships were built, and the christening of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as colorful real-life characters like Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and forensic pioneer August Vollmer of the Berkeley Police Department.”

Chua, 60, has been controversial as an author and academic. “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a memoir published in 2011, launched an extended debate over parenting as she described her admittedly harsh approach to raising her two daughters. Chua and her husband, the author and fellow Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld, have faced allegations of inappropriate conduct while hosting parties for students at their home.

Her other books include “Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations” and, with Rubenfeld, “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America.” MDT/AP