Going into Susan Blumberg-Kason’s Good Chinese Wife, I’ll confess to wanting to do a little armchair traveling. During a busy summer in which I’ve rarely crossed state lines, the idea of visiting exotic Hong Kong, lovely San Francisco and bustling China was too alluring to deny.
Nevermind that this is, of course, a memoir of a difficult intercultural marriage . . . not exactly light reading.
But powerful reading? Absolutely.
When Susan, a shy Midwesterner in love with Chinese culture, started graduate school in Hong Kong, she quickly fell for Cai, the Chinese man of her dreams. As they exchanged vows, Susan thought she’d stumbled into an exotic fairy tale, until she realized Cai — and his culture — were not what she thought.
In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional “Chinese” wife to her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. With keen insight…
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