Word: lee
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...Lee, a former Crimson vice president, begins her account with a remarkable story about an incident in 2005 in which a record-setting 104 out of 110 winners of a Powerball lottery chose the same five numbers—using fortune cookies. It was this story, and the discovery that the fortune cookie is not Chinese, that sparked Lee’s mission to learn more about the dessert. This search leads her to examine, tangentially, other facets of the American Chinese food industry: the ubiquity of the take-out menu, the popularity of chop suey, the integral role played...
...that she’s not just concerned with food, but Chinese-American experiences in general. With the perspective of an American-born-Chinese, she addresses with shrewdness and insight the historical and social dynamics of the Chinese in America. One chapter is devoted entirely to a Chinese family Lee knew, whose only viable professional option was the 24-hour, 364-day per year Chinese restaurant business, the strain of which leads to the family almost disintegrating. Another chapter, with a backbone of interview comments, recounts the story of Michael, an illegal Fujianese immigrant who risked his life to travel...
...This vein of culture—and the implications of identification and assimilation that it carries—run throughout “Fortune Cookie.” The novel also is able to transcend merely one culture, as Lee relates the Jewish relationship to Chinese food and how the original General Tso’s chicken transformed, based on American tastes, into its well-known form today...
...Unfortunately, despite its intellectual merit and entertainment value, the book sometimes becomes bogged down by the sheer volume of what Lee has to offer to her readers. A chapter on trying to find the best Chinese restaurant in the world seems superfluous and a bit boring compared with the rest of the book. She tends to use exaggerated descriptions, especially in relation to food and friends, that divulge little of interest. And while no one can fault her for her devotion to reporting, all of the names tied to all of the histories do prove confusing. Lee is more effective...
...With reporting by Ian Evans/Harare and William Lee Adams/London