When I was writing stories about Chinese American characters in my fiction classes, I'd get comments like, 'You should consider writing more universal stories.' But anything can happen to a Chinese American girl - just as much of the canon of English literature involves white men or women.

I grew up in a Chinese American enclave where the person who lived down the street had literally lived down the street from my mother in Shanghai.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

Jenny Zhang Quotes