Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

On Being

To Be American

Why I Stopped Being Chinese

Citizenship

BG: The Significant Years

Default Home

Letter from America

Winter Moon

The Summers of My Discontent

The Crying City

Mum and Me

Typhoon Mum

Maternity Leave

My Mother’s Story: The Fiction and Fact

Mum and Me

Precarious Precision

Journeys through Past Times: A Norwich Narrative

Home Base

And Then, Filial Time

Off-Season with Snake

Waiting Women

For As Long As We Both Shall Live

Wo/man Roars

Feminism and Faith

On Being Fowl: Notes on Some Explorations in Home Economics

Concubine Love

Origins

A Ledge, a Nun

The English of My Story

Ambition Game

The Book That Saved My Writing Life

To Loaf, or How Not to Write a CV

This Door Is Close

By Any Other Name