Amy Chua

Amy L. Chua was born in Champaign, Illinois, United States, on October 26, 1962. Her parents were ethnic Chinese from the Philippines who immigrated to the United States. Amy's father, Leon O. Chua, is an Electrical E...

Amy L. Chua was born in Champaign, Illinois, United States, on October 26, 1962. Her parents were ethnic Chinese from the Philippines who immigrated to the United States.
Amy's father, Leon O. Chua, is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is known as the father of nonlinear circuit theory, cellular neural networks, and discovered the memristor.

She was raised as a Roman Catholic and lived in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her family moved to Berkeley, California, when Amy was eight years old.

Chua went to El Cerrito High School and graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College in 1984. She obtained her J.D. cum laude in 1987 from Harvard Law School. She was also an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review

Amy L. Chua is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She joined the Yale faculty in 2001 after teaching at Duke Law School. Prior to starting her teaching career, she was a corporate law associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She specializes in the study of international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict, and globalization and the law.

 Chua lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Her husband Jed Rubenfeld, a Yale Law School professor, is a Jewish. She has two daughters, Sophia and Louisa ("Lulu"). Amy prides in the fact that her children can speak Chinese, and they have been "raised Jewish".

Chua has written three books: two studies of international affairs and a memoir.

Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of "market dominant minorities" and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority. It examines how globalization and democratization since 1989 have affected the relationship between market dominant minorities and the wider population.

World on Fire, a New York Times Bestseller, was selected by The Economist as one of the Best Books of 2003. The Guardian selected it as one of the "Top Political Reads of 2003".

Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall (2007), examines seven major empires and posits that their success depended on their tolerance of minorities.

Her latest book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, published in January 2011, is a comic memoir that ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting techniques.