GISH JEN is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a previous book of nonfiction, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self. Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for fiction, the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright Foundation. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and lives with her husband and children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Preface  Part I: We Edit the World  1 Three Edits 2 A Telling Irritation 3 Some Helpful Background 4 The Asian Paradox Part II: The Flexi-Self  5 What Is a Flexi-Self? 6 Boundary Blurring 7 The Genius and the Master 8 Testing, Testing 9 Patterns and Training Part III: The Big Pit Self  10 How WEIRD We Are 11 America, an Explanation Part IV: Meetings and Mixings  12 Our Talking, Our Selves 13 In Praise of Ambidependence 14 Greatness in Two Flavors  Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix A: Key to Self Text Appendix B: Recommended Reading  Notes  Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

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, drawing on a trove of personal accounts and cutting-edge research, 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 shared 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.