You may like some of these other multicultural novels featuring strong women and family relationships …
Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni
This Indian novel is an intricate modern drama in which generations and castes struggle over old and new mores. Anju and Sudha are cousins, born in the same household in Calcutta on the same day – which is also the day on which their mothers learn that both their husbands have been killed in a reckless quest for a cave full of rubies. Sudha grows up believing her father was a no-good schemer who brought ruin on his cousin, Anju's upper-class father. As they mature, Anju dreams of college, Sudha of children, but arranged marriages divide and thwart them. Also try Vine of Desire .
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
In this debut novel nine-year-old Chiyo is sold with her sister into slavery by their father after their mother's death. She becomes Sayuri, the beautiful geisha accomplished in the art of entertaining men during the 1930s & 40s. The story is told as she narrates her life story from her elegant suite in the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Now a major motion picture as well.
Mona In the Promised Land by Gish Jen
In this ebullient and inventive novel, Gish Jen restores multiculturalism from high concept to a fact of life. At least that's what it becomes for teenaged Mona Chang, who in 1968 moves with her newly prosperous family to Scarshill, New York, where the Chinese have become "the new Jews." What could be more natural than for Mona to take this literally – even to the point of converting? As Mona attends temple "rap" sessions and falls in love (with a nice Jewish boy who lives in a tepee), Jen introduces us to one of the most charming and sweet-spirited heroines in recent fiction, a girl who can wisecrack with perfect aplomb even when she's organizing the help in her father's pancake house. Also try The Love Wife.
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Although not about Asia or Asian women, many people feel that this novel is Kingsolver’s most significant book to date and is told in a style similar to Tan’s own; an extraordinarily dramatic and forthright novel of family, faith and fate, set in Africa. The year is 1959; the Congo is fighting for independence from Belgium, and Nathan Price has uprooted his wife and their four daughters from their Georgia home and delivered them to the tiny village of Kilanga without the full blessing of his church, or, indeed, of the villagers.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
This first novel is an Indian-American saga, covering several generations of the Ganguli family across three decades. Newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima leave India for the Boston area shortly after their traditional arranged marriage. The young husband, an engineering graduate student, is ready to be part of U.S. culture, but Ashima, disoriented and homesick, is less taken with late-Sixties America. She develops ties with other Bengali expatriates, forming lifelong friendships that help preserve the old ways in a new country. Also try the award-winning Interpreter of Maladies.
Middle Heart by Bette Bao Lord
This work opens in 1932, when the Japanese have conquered Manchuria. Three children united in their antagonism for the Japanese begin their lifelong friendship. Two of them live in the same household: the young master, Steel Hope and his servant, or "bookmate," Mountain Pine. Joining them is a creature called Firecrackers, a scrappy boy who can race like the wind, but before long it becomes clear that Firecrackers is not a boy at all. Later, Firecrackers becomes an actress named Summer Wishes, whose loving involvement with both Steel Hope and Mountain Pine adds a subtext of romance to this historical novel. Also try Spring Moon and Legacies: a Chinese Mosaic.
Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah (Biography)
Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer. A compelling, painful and ultimately triumphant true story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love and understanding.
Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
This debut novel begins in October 1886, when Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the British War Office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma, where a rare Erard grand piano is in need of repair. The piano belongs to an army surgeon-major whose unorthodox peacemaking methods: poetry, medicine, and now music, have brought a tentative quiet to the southern Shan States but have elicited questions from his superiors. On his journey through Europe, the Red Sea, India and into Burma, Edgar meets soldiers, mystics, bandits and tale-spinners, as well as an enchanting woman as elusive as the surgeon-major. Sensuous, lyrical, rich with passion and adventure, this is a hypnotic tale of myth, romance and self-discovery: an unforgettable novel.
The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo
In 1948, a 19-year-old Japanese pearl diver is in her fourth season of perfecting the techniques of her age-old occupation. But her dreams of spending her life diving in the waters of the Inland Sea are shattered when she discovers that she has leprosy. She knows that the shame attached to the disease is inescapable: rejection by her family is imminent, exile unavoidable. No more than two months elapse before authorities send her off to a leprosarium on the island of Nagashima, and although it is only seven miles from her home, it is a world away from all that is familiar to her.
Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
An auspicious debut, this sensitively written, impressively researched novel covers 20 years in the life of Pei, a Chinese girl sent to work in a silk factory during the first decades of the 20th century. Quick-witted, inquisitive, spirited Pei spends her early childhood on a poverty-stricken fish farm; her uncommunicative parents consign her to the factory for the wages she will send home. Initially terrified, Pei soon settles into the communal routine and finds the 12-hour factory day made bearable by the kindness of supervisors and fellow workers. Also try The Language of the Threads and The Samurai’s Garden.