The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

Overview

For many diners, McDonald's, with its bright arches found every few blocks, is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America. But there are actually more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's combined.

New York Times reporter and Chinese-American Jennifer 8. Lee uses food to trace the history of the Chinese-American experience. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jewish people and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese cuisine.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole--and the particular ways in which it has shaped the country.

Editorial Reviews

Readers will take an unexpected and entertaining journey--through culinary, social and cultural history--in this delightful first book on the origins of the customary after-Chinese-dinner treat by New York Times reporter Lee. When a large number of Powerball winners in a 2005 drawing revealed that mass-printed paper fortunes were to blame, the author (whose middle initial is Chinese for prosperity) went in search of the backstory. She tracked the winners down to Chinese restaurants all over America, and the paper slips the fortunes are written on back to a Brooklyn company. This travellike narrative serves as the spine of her cultural history--not a book on Chinese cuisine, but the Chinese food of take-out-and-delivery--and permits her to frequently but safely wander off into various tangents related to the cookie. There are satisfying minihistories on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food and a biography of the real General Tso, but Lee also pries open factoids and tidbits of American culture that eventually touch on large social and cultural subjects such as identity, immigration and nutrition. Copious research backs her many lively anecdotes, and being American-born Chinese yet willing to scrutinize herself as much as her objectives, she wins the reader over. Like the numbers on those lottery fortunes, the book's a winner. (Mar.)
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Jennifer 8. Lee

JENNIFER 8. LEE, the daughter of Chinese immigrants and a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese herself, grew up eating her mother's authentic Chinese food in her family's New York City kitchen before graduating from Harvard in 1999, with a degree in applied mathematics and economics, and studying at Beijing University. At the age of twenty-four, she was hired by the New York Times, where she is a metro reporter, and has written a variety of stories on culture, poverty, and technology. Her middle name "8" connotes prosperity in Chinese. She lives in Harlem.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Twelve

Filesize

664.18 KB

Number of Pages

320

eBook ISBN

0446511706