**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.