The kitchen god's wife; life and background of the author; introduction to the novel; a brief synopsis; list of characters; winnie's original family (shanghai); winnie's foster family (tsungming island); winnie's first marriage and family (china); winnie's second marriage and family (california); helen kwong's families (china and california); other characters; chronology of historical and fictional events; critical commentaries; chapters 1 & 2; chapters 3 & 4; chapters 5-7; chapters 8-10; chapters 11 & 12; chapters 13-15; chapters 16 & 17; chapters 18 & 19; chapters 20-23; chapters 24-26.
Critical essayscharacter analysis:jiang weili/winnie louie; tan's literary ingredients; settings; the asian-american literary phenomenon; essay topics and review questions; selected bibliography.
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""Tan is one of the prime storytellers writing fiction today.""--NEWSWEEKWinnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past-including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in.