Chapter 4: A Journey of Self-Discovery: From China to the United States

Coming to the United States was a turning point in my life. In 1997 after receiving my MA from Dalian University of Foreign Languages, I secured a scholarship in women’s studies at the University of Northern Iowa. A year later I entered the PhD program in anthropology at Yale University. Five years later I received my PhD from Yale and started teaching at a liberal arts college in upstate New York.

Coming to the United States started my self-discovery journey. Contact with this foreign culture offered me a new perspective that I was unable to have back in China. It lent me a vantage point to reexamine myself and my own culture in this foreign land. This journey has been long and difficult. Yet, over the years, it has gradually changed me. One of the most important changes has been my discovery of what it means to be a woman and a daughter—two of my core identities.