Chinese Culture

Fei Fei is a freshman at one of China’s elite universities. Though he is a talented student, he prefers to focus his efforts on leisure activities, playing pick-up basketball, shooting the breeze with his classmates, and napping. The only thing his otherwise idyllic life lacks is romance. But Fei Fei is not concerned about that. He feels that girls would take up too much of his time, and he’d rather play sports. At least that is what he thinks before he meets Summer, the object of the freshman class’s desire.

Obsession is a story about emotional growth and the pains that accompany it. Written in an experimental voice that employs an omniscient second-person perspective, it chronicles the life of a young Chinese woman who comes to the US in order to fall in love in a foreign land. Throughout her bizarre relationship with a Jewish-American scholar, who is both brilliant and selfish, we see how cultural difference leads to different interpretations of trust, personal boundary, respect, or even rape.