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.