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My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.

I first came to China as a child on a visit with my family in 1978.

The first 13 years of my life, I lived in China. My parents were missionaries there, and I was an only child. Often I felt lonely and out of place. Writing for me became my private place, where no one could come.

My father was second-generation Chinese-American, born in 1923 in California. My mother emigrated to the States from China when she was in her early twenties, in part to escape the political turmoil in China.

I was raised, myself, by extremely strict but also extremely loving Chinese immigrant parents. To this day, I believe that their having high expectations for me, coupled with love, was the greatest gift that anyone's ever given me. And so that's why, even though my husband is not Chinese, I try to raise my own two daughters the same way.

However, when my parents married in 1945, China was in turmoil and the possibility of returning grew increasingly remote, and they decided to begin their family in the United States.

I was born in Yangzhou, China, two years after World War II ended. I was 5 when my family escaped to Taiwan. Eight years later, we moved to Japan.

Being from a very traditional Chinese-American family, my parents believed the only options to have a successful life were to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or a business person.

After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.