Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China

Set against the background of the Japanese occupation of China, the Communist-Nationalist struggle, the White Terror of Taiwan, and American engagement in the Vietnam War, this novel recounts the story of two women - Mulberry and Peach - who are really one. Mulberry is a young woman who has fled the turmoil of postwar China to settle in the United States. Unable to forget the terrors she has witnessed or resolve the conflicts between her new life and her old, she develops a second personality: the fearless, tough-talking, sexually uninhibited Peach. While Mulberry clings to her cultural and ethical roots, Peach renounces her past to embrace the American way of life with a vengeance. This tale of fractured identity is mirrored in the novel's exploration of the tensions between modernity and tradition, exile and belonging, madness and sanity.