Gender and the Business of Fiction - Gish Jen

Award-winning author Gish Jen specializes in serious fun. In both fiction and nonfiction she has not only probed her own experiences as the daughter of Chinese immigrants, but has brought brilliance, wit and nuance to matters of identity more broadly—especially Americanness, ethnicity, and culture. Most recently, she has taken up the East-West differences of self that underlie phenomena we see all around us. Why don’t some students talk in class? Why does the West produce Apple, and the East Alibaba? Why are human rights of paramount importance to some, but not others? Why do we make of the copycat phenomenon we see in the East? What about the math scores?