Fans of Elizabeth Gilbert's cross-cultural memoir, Eat, Pray, Love are sure to be enthralled with former American expat and author, Susan Blumberg-Kason's brand new memoir, Good Chinese Wife: a Love Affair with China Gone Wrong. In her first ever memoir, Blumberg-Kason addresses the diversity, struggles, and extreme changes that occur in interracial Chinese-American marriages.

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Blumberg-Kason has previously channeled her cultural experience as a foreigner living in Hong Kong throughout her short story, "Ninety Minutes in Tsim Sha Tsui". Yet her memoir gives an in-depth exploration of life in an interracial marriage while living abroad at the same time.

How would Blumberg-Kason know so much about such a multicultural topic? She was a part of one herself.

It was the mid 1990s: an era before the explosion of Facebook, Twitter, and photo-centric travel blogs. Blumberg-Kason was only twenty-three years old when she first moved abroad to study Mandarin at her graduate school in Hong Kong.

Despite living in a place whose main language was Cantonese, it was easy for Blumberg-Kason to integrate herself and quickly fall in love with the colorful Chinese culture. In fact, she ended up meeting her Chinese husband (and future subject of her memoir), Cai Jun, her very first year abroad.

The relationship between Blumberg-Kason and her husband elevated rapidly. Less than a year after their courtship, Blumberg-Kason found herself saying "I do" to a life in China. However, Blumberg-Kason was quick to discover (on her wedding night, no less) that living in China as an American-especially as a "Chinese wife"-was not always an easy situation.

Throughout her relationship with Cai, Blumberg-Kason also discovers several cultural boundaries between Chinese and American marital expectations - some of which include raising a child, integrating with a new Chinese family, and helping to care for her in-laws when the family relocates to San Francisco.

While Blumberg-Kason does not embark on a round-the-world journey of self-exploration like Elizabeth Gilbert, Good Chinese Wife: a Love Affair with China Gone Wrong offers an insightful and intimate glimpse into what it means to be a foreign wife abroad.  

TagsHong Kong, Susan Blumberg-Kason, Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love, Good Chinese Wife: a Love Affair with China Gone Wrong