The Kitchen God's Wife

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Pearl deplores her mother Winnie's criticism and bossiness, her superstitious rituals, and her fearful, negative outlook, which has created an emotional abyss between them. Dreading her mother's reaction, Pearl has kept her multiple sclerosis a secret. But Winnie herself has concealed some astonishing facts about her early life in china. Encouraged by her friend and fellow émigré Helen Kwong, Winnie decides to tell Pearl the story of her life. In the telling, Winnie casts off social taboos, old wives' tales, wartime propaganda, American know-how - as well as her own regrets. And in the end, she shows her daughter - and herself - why it is still possible to change the past, to claim the future, to go beyond the fate of the Kichen God's Wife