Chinese Culture

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.

May, one of the new generations of Chinese super-rich kids, has outgrown Beijing and has come to California for an exciting life. She meets two American men: a Jewish American Harvard-educated professor named Leaf, and Mentor, a Silicon Valley self-made billionaire. As her relationships with Leaf and Mentor progress, May's past traumas in patriarchal China are revealed, while her cultural naivete leads to divergent interpretations of trust, personal boundaries, respect, fetishism, and sexual deviancy. May's life descends into a mad triangle of deception.