This fascinating autobiography offers not a success story nor a paean to the resilience of the
human spirit nor a search for identity constrained by class race and gender or the other
usual suspects nor a tearjerker that engenders in the Western reader a sense of superiority or
schadenfreude. Rather it is a tale of the joys and hardships of simple living of an enduring
curiosity about the world of teachers and friends of marriage and divorce of Chinese and
American societies of tofu and jalapeños of character flaws and personality quirks of humbug
and folly.
