More than just a sweet Chinese pastry eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a moon cake is a morsel of tradition.... The second daughter of successful Chinese parents, Maya Li grows up in Ohio, raised on equal measures of steamed rice and sliced white bread. Never a stellar student or an ambitious careerist, Maya seems content to stand in the reflected light of her beautiful, talented sister. Now, working in New York City in a series of dead-end jobs, she finds herself heartbroken and in search of the sense of self she lost with the sudden death of her beloved father and with the end of a poignant love affair. Then, almost accidentally, she is drawn to the country of her parents' youth. Maya embarks on a trip to China, much to the bewilderment of her aloof sister and preoccupied mother, both of whom never looked back on their legacy of sadness. Seeing too much in too little time, Maya and her tour group rush through temples, tombs, and beyond the Forbidden City. As she emerges into the rural peasant countryside, Maya's mind is awash with both memory and discovery, remorse and wonder. One thing emerges clearly: She is on a journey of the soul, and her connection to the land of her parents' birth is enduring. The unfolding geography--of both China and Maya's inner, private landscape--emerges vividly in this haunting first novel about a young woman coming to terms with her personal and ancestral history and with the increasing complexities of what it means to be American.

Moon Cakes

Literature & Fiction

Louie, Andrea

United States

One World/Ballantine

Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States

What happens when Chinese American youths travel to mainland China in search of their ancestral roots, only to realize that in many ways they still feel out of place, or when mainland Chinese realize that the lives of the Chinese abroad may not be as good as they had imagined? By considering programs designed to facilitate interactions between overseas Chinese and their ancestral homelands, Andrea Louie highlights how these programs not only create opportunities for new connections but also reveal the disjunctures that now separate Chinese Americans from China and mainland Chinese from the Chinese abroad.
Louie focuses on “In Search of Roots,” a program that takes young Chinese American adults of Cantonese descent to visit their ancestral villages in China’s Guangdong province. Through ethnographic interviews and observation, Louie examines the experiences of Chinese Americans both during village visits in China and following their participation in the program, which she herself took part in as an intern and researcher. She presents a vivid portrait of two populations who, though connected through family ties generations back, are meeting for the first time in the context of a rapidly changing contemporary China. Louie situates the participants’ and hosts’ shifting understandings of China and Chineseness within the context of transnational flows of people, media, goods, and money; China’s political and economic policies; and the racial and cultural politics of the United States.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Duke University Press Books

How Chinese Are You?: Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture

Chinese adoption is often viewed as creating new possibilities for the formation of multicultural, cosmopolitan families. For white adoptive families, it is an opportunity to learn more about China and Chinese culture, as many adoptive families today try to honor what they view as their children’s “birth culture.” However, transnational, transracial adoption also presents challenges to families who are trying to impart in their children cultural and racial identities that they themselves do not possess, while at the same time incorporating their own racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Many of their ideas are based on assumptions about how authentic Chinese and Chinese Americans practice Chinese culture. Based on a comparative ethnographic study of white and Asian American adoptive parents over an eight year period, How Chinese Are You? explores how white adoptive parents, adoption professionals, Chinese American adoptive parents, and teens adopted from China as children negotiate meanings of Chinese identity in the context of race, culture, and family. Viewing Chineseness as something produced, rather than inherited, Andrea Louie examines how the idea of “ethnic options” differs for Asian American versus white adoptive parents as they produce Chinese adoptee identities, while re-working their own ethnic, racial, and parental identities. Considering the broader context of Asian American cultural production, Louie analyzes how both white and Asian American adoptive parents engage in changing understandings of and relationships with “Chineseness” as a form of ethnic identity, racial identity, or cultural capital over the life course. Louie also demonstrates how constructions of Chinese culture and racial identity dynamically play out between parents and their children, and for Chinese adoptee teenagers themselves as they “come of age.” How Chinese Are You? is an engaging and original study of the fluidity of race, ethnicity, and cultural identity in modern America.

NYU Press

Chinese adoption is often viewed as creating new possibilities for the formation of multicultural, cosmopolitan families. For white adoptive families, it is an opportunity to learn more about China and Chinese culture, as many adoptive families today try to honor what they view as their children’s “birth culture.” However, transnational, transracial adoption also presents challenges to families who are trying to impart in their children cultural and racial identities that they themselves do not possess, while at the same time incorporating their own racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Many of their ideas are based on assumptions about how authentic Chinese and Chinese Americans practice Chinese culture. 
Based on a comparative ethnographic study of white and Asian American adoptive parents over an eight year period, How Chinese Are You? explores how white adoptive parents, adoption professionals, Chinese American adoptive parents, and teens adopted from China as children negotiate meanings of Chinese identity in the context of race, culture, and family. Viewing Chineseness as something produced, rather than inherited, Andrea Louie examines how the idea of “ethnic options” differs for Asian American versus white adoptive parents as they produce Chinese adoptee identities, while re-working their own ethnic, racial, and parental identities. Considering the broader context of Asian American cultural production, Louie analyzes how both white and Asian American adoptive parents engage in changing understandings of and relationships with “Chineseness” as a form of ethnic identity, racial identity, or cultural capital over the life course. Louie also demonstrates how constructions of Chinese culture and racial identity dynamically play out between parents and their children, and for Chinese adoptee teenagers themselves as they “come of age.” How Chinese Are You? is an engaging and original study of the fluidity of race, ethnicity, and cultural identity in modern America.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Louie, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Louie, Andrea

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Louie, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Moon Cakes

Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States

Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States

How Chinese Are You?: Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture

How Chinese Are You?: Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture