A WOMAN FROM WUHAN

Wang presents a memoir of immigration and surviving dysfunctional relationships.

The author, a former software engineer, offers a personal story of moving to a new country and a wide-ranging account of learning and growing from one’s mistakes. It begins as a remembrance of growing up in Mao-era China and then migrating to the United States to seek better educational opportunities and, ultimately, more choices in her life. Wang recounts the challenges she faced, including some surprises when negotiating cultural differences—notably, what words and gestures were deemed unacceptable in polite American society. One of the focuses of the book is Wang’s education and career, and the difference that moving to America made on both. The greater part of the book, though, centers on the author’s troubled relationships, and includes highly disturbing material involving sexual predation; she tells of a marriage and another relationship in which she learned horrible truths about her partners. Over the course of this remembrance, Wang interweaves accounts of her personal struggles with stories of her career, which included a stint as a restaurateur. She also briefly touches on the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on her connection to her native Wuhan. Overall, Wang’s memoir is a highly readable account of immigration and Americanization. However, in the latter part of the book, the author doesn’t delve as much into cultural adjustments, beyond briefly discussing how “as a Chinese mom…I had always been strict, especially when it came to her academics” with her daughters. Still, it’s a work that’s often moving in its openness.

An often engaging story of adaptation and life-changing challenges.