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The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap
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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2017
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Description
Drawing on a trove of personal accounts and cutting-edge research, a “timely and extremely important” book (The Washington Post) from the acclaimed, award-winning author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon that shows how our worldviews are shaped—and what that might mean for the shared future of the United States and China. 

As East and West become more and more entwined, we also continue to baffle one another. What’s more important—self-sacrifice or self-definition? Do we ultimately answer to something larger than ourselves—a family, a religion, a troop? Or is our mantra “To thine own self be true”?
 
Gish Jen shows how our worldviews are shaped by what cultural psychologists call "independent" and "interdependent" models of selfhood. Coloring what we perceive, remember, do, make, and tell, imbuing everything from our ideas about copying to our conceptions of human rights, these models help explain why the United States produced Apple while China created Alibaba—and what that might mean for our future. As engaging as it is fascinating, The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a book that profoundly transforms our understanding of ourselves and our time.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
02/28/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781101947838
ASIN:
B01GYQ05K8
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Gish Jen. (2017). The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Gish Jen. 2017. The Girl At the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Gish Jen, The Girl At the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Gish Jen. The Girl At the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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99d2921d-fbbb-c203-1115-970aee0809cf
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 16:11:05
Date Updated:
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Mar 24, 2024 07:34:34
Last Metadata Change:
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      • role: Author
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      • bioText: GISH JEN is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a previous book of nonfiction, Tiger Writing. Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She teaches from time to time in China and otherwise lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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publishDate
2017-02-28T00:00:00-05:00
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title
The Girl at the Baggage Claim
fullDescription
Drawing on a trove of personal accounts and cutting-edge research, a “timely and extremely important” book (The Washington Post) from the acclaimed, award-winning author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon that shows how our worldviews are shaped—and what that might mean for the shared future of the United States and China. 

As East and West become more and more entwined, we also continue to baffle one another. What’s more important—self-sacrifice or self-definition? Do we ultimately answer to something larger than ourselves—a family, a religion, a troop? Or is our mantra “To thine own self be true”?
 
Gish Jen shows how our worldviews are shaped by what cultural psychologists call "independent" and "interdependent" models of selfhood. Coloring what we perceive, remember, do, make, and tell, imbuing everything from our ideas about copying to our conceptions of human rights, these models help explain why the United States produced Apple while China created Alibaba—and what that might mean for our future. As engaging as it is fascinating, The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a book that profoundly transforms our understanding of ourselves and our time.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Lisa See, The Washington Post
      • content: "Timely and extremely important . . . In this book Gish Jen has once again taken the universal and made it personal, and vice versa . . . She is uniquely suited to explore this topic."
      • premium: False
      • source: Nell Minow, The Huffington Post
      • content: "Wise, impeccably researched, beautifully written, and vitally important . . . Gish Jen brings a novelist's understanding heart and a scholar's appreciation to her new book on the cultural differences between East and West, and a sympathetic perspective of someone who has been both and insider and an outsider in both."
      • premium: False
      • source: Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
      • content: "Fascinating . . . Rich with examples of the contrast between Asian Society and our own. . . . She is onto something that the typical American may become aware of as we bump into people unlike ourselves--from other cultures, not limited to Asians."
      • premium: False
      • source: Amy Chua, the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
      • content: "A fascinating, brilliant book that gripped me from page one. Subtle, erudite, and daring, The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a tour de force by one of the most insightful writers of our time."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        February 13, 2017
        Novelist Jen (Typical American) gleans insight from the field of cultural psychology and her own experiences as an American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants to explore the nature of cultural divide between Eastern and Western societies. She argues that the culture gap “stems from a difference between the conception of self that dominates the West and the conception of self that dominate the East.” She explores the notion of the Western construct as “individualist, independent” and Eastern as “interdependent” and “collectivistic” through a variety of prisms—such as education, business, art, and relationships—and unpacks tough subjects, such as racism and prejudice in America, with sophisticated insight. Her examples are rooted in her own experience as a first generation Chinese-American, so the book focuses a lot on China and America, specifically describing the experiences of more affluent city-dwelling Americans. Jen is most compelling when she draws attention to the blended constructs of those who straddle both cultures, such as Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee or Chinese-American artist Maya Lin. She articulates the complexities of culture with a novelist’s command of language in this rich exploration of the East-West culture gap.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        December 1, 2016
        A Chinese-American novelist and essayist investigates how culture shapes identity.Award-winning writer Jen (Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Independent Self, 2013, etc.) continues the inquiry of her last nonfiction book, in which she examined differences in Eastern and Western writing and art. Here, drawing on abundant research from psychology and sociology, the author probes East-West distinctions in self-definition and community. These distinctions are so profound, she asserts, that they affect personal relationships, teaching, storytelling, architecture, and even "our ideas about law, rehabilitation, religion, freedom, and choice." In the individualistic West, Jen argues, the self is "a kind of avocado, replete with a big pit on which it is focused." In the collectivist East, the "flexi-self" is interdependent, "a context-focused self, oriented toward serving something larger than itself." Whereas the big pit self believes that individual ability and drive lead to achievement, the flexi-self, Jen asserts, "starts with debt" to parents, teachers, and community. The flexi-self is more attuned to patterns than to "the strange and novel"; the Chinese, therefore, are not "divergent thinkers--thinkers who can easily generate novel uses for a brick, say, or a tree branch," but rather can adapt others' ideas to their own needs. Jen makes much of the Chinese college admission exam, in which students' success is supported by the entire nation. Traffic noise is forbidden so as not to disturb the test-takers, and taxi drivers offer students free rides to the exam site. Yet despite the "self-sacrificing help" of parents and teachers, students are under extreme pressure to perform, since their entire future depends on admission to an elite college. In asserting that American schools "concentrate more on imagination and resourcefulness"--big pit traits--Jen ignores the competition for top nursery schools, emphasis on resume-building extracurricular activities, and intense test-prep tutoring that mark the experiences of many students. While Jen's findings are undoubtedly intriguing, she is not fully convincing in her portrayal of the modest, hardworking flexi-self and the big pit self "with high self-esteem and a lack of stick-to-it-ness."

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        November 1, 2016
        Having taken such a sharp, knowing look at America's shifting multicultural boundaries in fiction like Typical American, Jen turns to nonfiction to clarify how differently Easterners and Westerners regard the concepts of self and society and what that means for politics, business, art, and society in an ever closer world. Personal anecdote complements the up-to-date research.

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        February 1, 2017

        As a follow-up to 2013's Tiger Writing, Jen (Mona in the Promised Land) takes readers on an exploration of independent-minded, self-focused "big pit" Westerners and the interdependent "flexi-selves" found in abundance in many other cultures. Jen uses her experiences growing up in America as a second-generation Chinese American to explore the tensions and bridge the gap between these two worldviews and to highlight the ways in which these differences in social orientation can lead to cultural misunderstanding. Much of her argument is rooted in the work of cognitive scientists such as Richard Nisbett (The Geography of Thought). Jen builds upon this investigation by detailing the implications of these cultural and psychological differences for the arts, education, and sports, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of each group. Ultimately, Jen argues that both types of orientation are present to varying degree in most individuals, and that developing an "ambidependence" that leverages the best of each outlook could result in positive social, economic, and cultural change. VERDICT An excellent and engaging read, certain to appeal to readers interested in cross-cultural communication, cognitive science, and the experience of Asian Americans in the United States.--Rebecca Brody, Westfield State Univ., MA

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        November 1, 2016

        Having taken such a sharp, knowing look at America's shifting multicultural boundaries in fiction like Typical American, Jen turns to nonfiction to clarify how differently Easterners and Westerners regard the concepts of self and society and what that means for politics, business, art, and society in an ever closer world. Personal anecdote complements the up-to-date research.

        Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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shortDescription
Drawing on a trove of personal accounts and cutting-edge research, a “timely and extremely important” book (The Washington Post) from the acclaimed, award-winning author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon that shows how our worldviews are shaped—and what that might mean for the shared future of the United States and China. 

As East and West become more and more entwined, we also continue to baffle one another. What’s more important—self-sacrifice or self-definition? Do we ultimately answer to something larger than ourselves—a family, a religion, a troop? Or is our mantra “To thine own self be true”?
 
Gish Jen shows how our worldviews are shaped by what cultural psychologists call "independent" and "interdependent" models of selfhood. Coloring what we perceive, remember, do, make, and tell, imbuing everything from our ideas about copying to our conceptions of human rights, these models help explain...
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