One year ago, a very different scene was unfolding at Madison Square Garden, one that in retrospect shows just how badly we needed Jeremy Lin way before we'd ever heard of him. And by "we," I don't just mean Knicks fans.

At yet another dull game in the midst of...

A few years ago, a draft of my first novel received a sweeping round of rejections, all complimentary yet unyielding, a devastating combination. After that, I could no longer look at the document titled "novel" that I'd virtually lived inside for three years. I couldn't imagine writing again...

I used to think of my trashy-TV viewing as a necessary but guilty habit. I spend my days reading fine literature and knocking my skull trying to write it. I've long taught in public schools, and I'm married to an economics reporter, and I come from a family of activists,...

After I wrote my first blog post here ("I Called Amy Tan a Dirty Word -- And Then She Friended Me"), I felt a certain sense of satisfaction. I felt like I'd excavated something difficult about ethnicity and gender and literature and identity. In my small way, I'd...

The day that a review of my first novel ran in the New York Times, I received a Facebook friend request from Amy Tan. It seemed she was welcoming me into the club--of novelists, Chinese American novelists, Chinese American female novelists reviewed in the Times. I...