I haven't read the book, but I have seen evidence that the WSJ extracts were highly selective. In fact in the Guardian piece below, in which her children are also quoted, it says that she completely changed her approach when she realised the effect that it had. Her daughter is quoted as saying:
"The other day, I messed up a math test. I texted my mom that I got an A- and she replied, 'Who cares! Mummy loves u!'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy-chua-...
[Edit for those who don't want to read the linked article: The Guardian piece casts the book as a confessionary "these are the things I did because I thought they were right and boy, it just made my kids miserable so I stopped" rather than the WSJ-implied tone of "this is the way I raised my kids and you wussy Westerners should do it like this or be squashed"]
I don't think Chua's initial excerpt actually said anything meaningful. It was like some sort of bizarre Rorschach test, that said very little, and upset a lot of people.
My point is, having read it the first time, i too went through the "yeah this kind of describes my childhood" thing, and then looked back at the claims, together with her caveats and noticed that there was precisely nothing one could take away from her article, except that it was an anecdote about her family, and how other people think she's a horrible person.
There was no generalizable information in her piece, and thus it was ultimately sort of an inconsequential, and self-satisfying fluff piece. What does amaze me, is the amount of time and effort dedicated to discussing her and what she's said. Given that i don't think the substance of her comments was worthy of such discussion, all i can figure is that she is controversial because of who she is and the style of the comments.
And the emotional message strikes some pretty tender nerves for those millions who either are status-anxious about how their children will end up (think of all those upper-class New York parents angling to get their toddlers into The Right Preschool), or who was raised by someone with that kind of anxiety.
(also i just noticed i misspelled Amy Chua's name 3 times)
But i'm slightly more ambivalent than he is on the subject. What Chua wrote did hit a resonant note in American cultural stereotypes, and that's bad, BUT, i don't think it invalidates Chua's points particularly either.
Chua's approach is a particular style of child rearing, but her own piece was so filled with nebulous caveats, that i found it hard to believe that anything she particularly said was rooted in being Chinese.
The real problem in the end, i guess, is just that she was an Asian woman saying these things. Not that she's got some of the overbearing qualities shared by strict mothers everywhere.