Audiobook7 hours
The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap
Written by Gish Jen
Narrated by Caroline McLaughlin
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a provocative and important study of the different ideas Easterners and Westerners have about the self and society and what this means for current debates in art, education, geopolitics, and business.
Never have East and West come as close as they are today, yet we are still baffled by one another. Is our mantra "To thine own self be true?" Or do we believe we belong to something larger than ourselves-a family, a religion, a troop-that claims our first allegiance? Gish Jen-drawing on a treasure trove of stories and personal anecdotes, as well as cutting-edge research in cultural psychology-reveals how this difference shapes what we perceive and remember, what we say and do and make-how it shapes everything from our ideas about copying and talking in class to the difference between Apple and Alibaba. As engaging as it is illuminating, this is a book that stands to profoundly enrich our understanding of ourselves and of our world.
Never have East and West come as close as they are today, yet we are still baffled by one another. Is our mantra "To thine own self be true?" Or do we believe we belong to something larger than ourselves-a family, a religion, a troop-that claims our first allegiance? Gish Jen-drawing on a treasure trove of stories and personal anecdotes, as well as cutting-edge research in cultural psychology-reveals how this difference shapes what we perceive and remember, what we say and do and make-how it shapes everything from our ideas about copying and talking in class to the difference between Apple and Alibaba. As engaging as it is illuminating, this is a book that stands to profoundly enrich our understanding of ourselves and of our world.
Related to The Girl at the Baggage Claim
Related audiobooks
Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ill Fares the Land Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pine Barrens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMill Town: Reckoning with What Remains Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wine Lover's Daughter: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One in a Billion: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey through Modern-Day China Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Summerland: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Off Course Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvation City: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody: A Book About Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Way: A Story of the First People Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Light of What We Know Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Psychology For You
How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Starts with Self-Compassion: A Practical Road Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How To Win Friends And Influence People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You’re Not the Only One F*cking Up: Breaking the Endless Cycle of Dating Mistakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed For You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Banish Your Inner Critic: Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to Unleash Your Creativity and Do Your Best Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Girl at the Baggage Claim
Rating: 3.3181818181818183 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
11 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A lot of interesting and illuminating stuff - I feel like I learned a lot. Good thoughts about individualistic vs communalist cultures, how they see each other, and some of the pros and cons of each. BUT I think the writing style is just too weird for me. She uses a metaphor of an avocado and its pit for individualists - ok, I get that, it’s a vivid metaphor that the individualist has this overwhelmingly big and inflexible self tucked away inside. But then she continues to refer to “big pit people” through the whole book. I found that jarring for a while, then it just got annoying. I think she’s got some really great ideas, and she uses some excellent literary quotes to illustrate her arguments, I just wish some of the terminology was a bit more conventional so I could focus on the ideas instead of the odd writing.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Took me a long time to read, because of the research bits. I am definitely a "big pit avocado," though I thought it was a strange metaphor. The book did help me understand the interdependent culture of asians better.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Americans (and perhaps others who live in the West) have often commented about the mysterious East without considering that the people of China, Japan, Thailand, etc., might think those who live in the other half of the world are a bit weird, as well.Gish Jen, an American of Chinese ancestry, explores this cultural divide in her intriguing recent book “The Girl at the Baggage Claim.” She argues there are basically just two kinds of people in the world, those who put the individual first and those who put the group first. Both kinds can be found anywhere in the world, but the first kind dominates the West while the second kind dominates the East. Most of us, of course, are capable of identifying with both kinds, such as the baseball player who goes all out for the Indians until he is traded to the Phillies. Then it's Phillies do or die, unless the club won't give him the contract he thinks he deserves.Although Westerners may work for a company, join clubs and churches, vote consistently for one political party or another and so forth, mostly we are individualistic. We are loyal to others, even members of our own family, only up to a point. Mostly we look out for No. 1.In the East, families tend to be stronger. So are loyalties to larger groups, including the nation as a whole. Japan had kamikaze pilots in World War II, not the Americans.Jen explores such subjects as why Asian students do so well in school and why Asian artists and engineers find nothing morally wrong with copying another's work of art or electronics. She also explains why Chinese autobiographies are often written in third person.Neither kind of person is"more human than the other," she says. "Both are shaped by chance, circumstance, and human need."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl at the Baggage Claim is Gish Jen's book explaining the East-West culture gap, by examining the differences between interdependent and independent people. We're all somewhere along a continuum, but in the West, and especially the US, we value independence and uniqueness, while in the East, using China as the main example, interdependence with one's family and community is stressed. Jen was raised by parents who had immigrated to the US from China, and now teaches at both American and Asian universities, giving her a perspective that takes in Eastern and Western cultures as both an insider and an outsider. Having lived in five countries, albeit all in the West, I'm fascinated by how the culture we are raised in shapes how we perceive the world. We make unconscious value judgements all the time, based on nothing more than what we're used to and as the world becomes an increasingly global place, we desperately need to make the effort to understand cultural differences and how to work with and around them. Jen does go a little academic at times with her subject matter, but it's clearly one that she understands and finds fascinating.