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The southern Chinese are a mixture of the Han, or northern Chinese, and the local tribes, some of which allowed women a great deal of freedom - much to the horror of the Chinese who were good Confucians. As a result, the folklore from southern China has strong females; and I found that the folktales mirrored my own experience.

There's so much emphasis on the economic might of China, of Southeast Asia, Asian 'Super Tigers' and things like that. But nobody was really looking from the perspective of a family story, of these individuals.

I would not call my family 'traditional Chinese.' We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

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 am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.

I'm very curious to witness the historic transformation of Chinese women.

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.

My parents kept the best aspects of the Asian culture, and they Americanized the family. My mother was a great example for me. She was a working mother with a good career.