The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a provocative and important study of the different ideas Easterners and Westerners have about the self and society and what this means for current debates in art, education, geopolitics, and business. Never have East and West come as close as they are today, yet we are still baffled by one another. Is our mantra "To thine own self be true?" Or do we believe we belong to something larger than ourselves-a family, a religion, a troop-that claims our first allegiance? Gish Jen-drawing on a treasure trove of stories and personal anecdotes, as well as cutting-edge research in cultural psychology-reveals how this difference shapes what we perceive and remember, what we say and do and make-how it shapes everything from our ideas about copying and talking in class to the difference between Apple and Alibaba. As engaging as it is illuminating, this is a book that stands to profoundly enrich our understanding of ourselves and of our world.
Sixty-eight-year-old Hattie Kong, descendant of Confucius, daughter of an American missionary, has lived to see both her husband and her best friend die back-to-back in a single year: 'It was like having twins' She got to book the same church with the same pianist for both funerals and did think she should have gotten some sort of twofer from the crematorium.'
But two years later, it's time for Hattie to start over. She moves to a small New England town where she is soon joined by a Cambodian American family and an ex-lover now a retired neuroscientist all of them looking for their own new lives.
What Hattie makes of this situation and of the changing town of Riverlake challenged as it is, in 2001, by fundamentalist Christians, struggling family farms, and unexpected immigrants lies at the center of a novel that asks deep and absorbing questions about religion, home, and what 'worlds' we make of the world.
Moving, humorous, and broad-ranging, World and Town is rich in character and brilliantly evocative of its time and place. This is a masterful novel from one of our most admired writers.
'Jen's prose is unique, dense, and enthralling, and her characters are marvels of authenticity.''Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From the massively talented Gish Jen comes a barbed, moving, and stylistically dazzling new novel about the elusive nature of kinship. The Wongs describe themselves as a "half half" family, but the actual fractions are more complicated, given Carnegie's Chinese heritage, his wife Blondie's WASP background, and the various ethnic permutations of their adopted and biological children.
Into this new American family comes a volatile new member.Her name is Lanlan. She is Carnegie's Mainland Chinese relative, a tough, surprisingly lovely survivor of the Cultural Revolution, who comes courtesy of Carnegie's mother's will. Is Lanlan a very good nanny, a heartless climber, or a posthumous gift from a formidable mother who never stopped wanting her son to marry a nice Chinese girl? Rich in insight, buoyed by humor, The Love Wife is a hugely satisfying work
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