It's been two years since the term "Tiger Mom" roared its way into our cultural lexicon, thanks to Amy Chua's best-selling 2011 book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." The Yale law professor's provocative memoir reignited the Mommy Wars by attributing the success of Asian American kids to so-called Chinese-style parenting (shorthand: Demand perfect grades, enforce daily music practice and restrict social activities like playdates and sleepovers), as opposed to more permissive "Western-style parenting."

Novelist Kim Wong Keltner ("The Dim Sum of All Things," "I Want Candy"), a Chinese American mom herself who was raised in San Francisco by authoritarian immigrant parents, says, "After Chua's book came out, random strangers would come up to me if I was out pushing my daughter's stroller and say, 'Are you a Tiger Mom?' It happened all the time. These were the same people who used to always mistake me for the waitress at their local Chinese restaurant. ... I started jotting down notes and thought, I've got to show people there is more to being a Chinese woman than these two stereotypes."

Keltner's first book of nonfiction, "Tiger Babies Strike Back: How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom But Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side" (William Morrow; $14), is an irreverently funny yet emphatic denouncement of Chua's brand of "perfectionist parenting." Part memoir, part manifesto, Keltner, 43, uses her own vividly remembered, often painful, childhood experiences as ammo to shoot down the idea that achievement and filial obedience are paramount to a child's success - or emotional well-being.

"I think that all that any of us wants is to be seen and accepted for who we really are, the person underneath the straight A's and the striving for perfection," says Keltner during a recent interview in the family-photo-filled kitchen of her parents' Twin Peaks home, where she was raised with her two older brothers until she left for UC Berkeley.

Keltner's 9-year-old daughter, Lucy, watches TV in the adjacent living room, while her mom recalls the humiliation and isolation that she endured as an artistic, exuberant child in an intensely competitive, controlled household where "there was constant pressure to succeed. You were expected to do everything perfectly and there was no room for mistakes, no room for being goofy, playful. For being a kid."

"I was always trying to hug my relatives and I'd just get patted on the arm," says Keltner.

In "Tiger Babies," Keltner recalls numerous incidents of intense shaming - about her looks, her weight, her accomplishments - by her mother Irene (called "The Reamer" in her book), whose parents left Shanghai during World War II and ran a travel agency in Chinatown.

In one heartbreaking incident in her book, Keltner's mother calls her "disgusting" when, at age 10, she strikes a funny pouty-faced pose waiting for her goodnight kiss - and never kisses her goodnight again.

Despite her disturbing memories, Keltner discovered a deep reserve of resilience and entered adulthood with her confidence and abundant wit intact.

In "Tiger Babies" she writes, "As a child I never knew what dirt felt like on bare feet, and I never once ran through a sprinkler on a hot day. My parents thought I might catch stupid that way."

Lots of affection

Ever since Keltner and her husband, Rolf, a pediatric speech therapist whom she met in a Chaucer class at Cal, became parents, she says it has been "an easy, intuitive and ongoing" decision for them both to raise their daughter altogether differently: "less rule following, more unscheduled free time, lots of affection."

"It's not like I don't have high standards," says Keltner. "I just think there are ways to be tough but still accessible to your children. We get our homework done and still have playdates. There's room for both."

Keltner's book arrives at a moment when psychological research is tilting in her favor. In March, University of Texas at Austin professor Su Yeong Kim released (to great media fanfare) the results of her 8-year study of 444 Bay Area Chinese American households. Her results show that children of parents classified as "Tiger" actually had lower GPAs, and more depressive symptoms and family alienation than the kids of parents characterized as "supportive" or "easygoing."

"We need to put the brakes on exalting achievement at the cost of everything else," says Keltner, who in 2008 moved to Nevada City. She explains that she felt "the only way to break out of the Chinese locked box of expectation, obligation and guilt" was to leave San Francisco.

Legacy of stoicism

Despite her exasperation with the Tiger Mom tradition, Keltner writes movingly about the history and legacy of Chinese stoicism and obedience. She describes growing up straddling two cultures, feeling not assimilated enough with her friends at St. Brigid Catholic School, and not Asian enough in Chinese school, which she attended for four hours every day after regular school.

Keltner says her relationship with her mom since the book's release "has been pretty dicey, but she's coming around. The intellectual knowledge that your child is writing a book is very different from opening it and reading conversations you had 30 years ago.

"In Chinese culture it is very bad to air one's dirty laundry, to say anything about the family structure. Your job is to be in your place, to be number one, two or three daughter, and when someone deviates from that set idea, it can be incredibly disturbing."

As a counterpoint, Keltner wrote a heartfelt chapter ("Tiger Mom's Heart Grew Two Sizes That Day") about witnessing a newfound warmth and joy in her mother when Lucy was born. "I had no idea how to take care of a baby or what to do with her all day, and I could not have made it through that without my mom," she says.

"It's understandable that immigrants want success for their children," Keltner says. "They want to know all their sacrifices were worth it. My message is just that we need alternatives in our mind to what success means. Every child is different, and you can't adhere to a formula.

"It should be OK to not be the very, very best. I mean, how many people can be the very best at something? One. So what are the other 99.9 percent supposed to feel?

"I saw a great T-shirt: 'They said I could be anything, so I decided to be awesome,' " Keltner says with a laugh. "God, I love that."

Kim Wong Keltner: "Tiger Babies Strike Back." 4 p.m. June 8. Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera. 3 p.m. June 22. Eastwind Books, 2066 University Ave., Berkeley.

Jessica Zack is a Marin County freelance writer. E-mail: datebookletters@sfchronicle.com