The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap

by Gish Jen

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101947821
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

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.

Hometown:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

August 12, 1955

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A. Harvard University, M.F.A., Iowa Writers¿ Workshop

Read an Excerpt

Part I
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Girl at the Baggage Claim"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Gish Jen.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part I We Edit the World

1 Three Edits 3

2 A Telling Irritation 14

3 Some Helpful Background 22

4 The Asian Paradox 37

Part II The Flexi-Self

5 What Is a Flexi-Self? 49

6 Boundary Blurring 61

7 The Genius and the Master 79

8 Testing, Testing 92

9 Patterns and Training 120

Part III The Big Pit Self

10 How WEIRD We Are 147

11 America, an Explanation 170

Part IV Meetings and Mixings

12 Our Talking, Our Selves 185

13 In Praise of Ambidependence 210

14 Greatness in Two Flavors 235

Epilogue 248

Acknowledgments 253

Appendix A Key to Self Text 255

Appendix B Recommended Reading 257

Notes 259

Bibliography 277

Illustration Credits 297

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

02/13/2017
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. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/01/2017
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

Library Journal

2016-11-23
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."

Kirkus Reviews

Both timely and extremely important.” —The Washington Post

“Wise, impeccably researched, beautifully written, and vitally important. . . . Gish Jen brings a novelist’s understanding heart and a scholar’s appreciation.” —The Huffington Post

“A fascinating, brilliant book that gripped me from page one. . . . A tour de force by one of the most insightful writers of our time.” —Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
 
“A deep psychological examination of how place, habits, and identity mix in our world. Tremendous!” —Yo-Yo Ma

“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.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The qualities of carefully rendered fiction shine through in [Jen’s] book, turning a study of culture and psychology into an engaging narrative. Whether in commerce, diplomacy, or travel, readers can take away memorable insights into how identity and context shape worldviews.” —Popmatters

“Jen holds up a comprehensive and scholarly mirror to both worldviews—and be warned: Her mirror is honest, and at times provocative.” —BookPage

“I honestly can’t overstate how fascinating I found this book. It’s shaken (in the best possible way) some of my basic assumptions about being a Self.” —Jason Gots, producer of Big Think

“In her trademark lively and witty prose, Gish Jen not only limns non-Western views of the self but questions whether the Western self is really a natural way to be. A powerful, provocative work.” —Michael Puett, professor of Chinese history, Harvard University

“Truly eye-opening and thought-provoking.” —Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T.

“Gish Jen draws on personal experience, interviews with experts, and her astute reading of both literature and social science to illuminate the crucial question of self in culture. . . . The Girl at the Baggage Claim is remarkable and fluent but, most of all, essential.” —Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

“Insightful, far-reaching and a joy to read. . . . The Girl at the Baggage Claim answered questions I’ve been asking my whole life.” —David Henry Hwang, playwright of M. Butterfly

“This book gives special proof to the belief that our best novelists are also our best psychologists. With characteristic wit and unfailing insight, Gish Jen creates a genre all her own—uniquely universal, deeply serious, and unselfconsciously joyous.” —Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

“A beautifully observed book . . . poignantly captures the personal tussle between independence and interdependence so many of us are caught in. A must read for anyone navigating the East-West divide.” —Priya Natarajan, author of Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos

From the Publisher