Chinese Culture

Obsession is a story about emotional growth and the pains that accompany it. Written in an experimental voice that employs an omniscient second-person perspective, it chronicles the life of a young Chinese woman who comes to the US in order to fall in love in a foreign land. Throughout her bizarre relationship with a Jewish-American scholar, who is both brilliant and selfish, we see how cultural difference leads to different interpretations of trust, personal boundary, respect, or even rape.

Set in late-1980s Beijing, Betrayal follows the lives of two best friends at Beijing’s top high school. Lotus and Jade, both 16 years old, share many of the same interests and both live on privileged compounds reserved for the families of high-ranking officials in the Chinese Communist Party. In their junior year, Lotus makes the contact of another young girl her age, May May. May May is everything Jade is not: impulsive, direct, adventurous, and sexually deviant. But May May also has a broad knowledge of world literature, international pop music, and radical thinkers.