Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self

Novelist Jen (Mona in the Promised Land) compiles three pieces originally delivered as special lectures in 2012 at Harvard. She compares the Western with the Eastern interdependent self, and in her first essay, uses her father's autobiography to demonstrate this contrast and its implications for self-narrative. To a Westerner, her father's description of his childhood home contains many seemingly trivial details about the structure itself, with scant information about the individuals living there. But for him, Jen notes, the power structure of his world, as defined by the structure of his house, was most important. In her second essay, Jen discusses studies that measured perceptual differences between Easterners and Westerners. The studies found that, when presented with a passage to read or a photo to view, Easterners typically remember things holistically, whereas Westerners tend to focus on distinct aspects. Jen's third essay discusses her own writing and provides a look inside the mind of a writer who must often navigate between Western and Eastern thought.