The lines between autobiography and memoir are sometimes very blurred for me, but this is one of those books that is very clearly memoir. Vast swathes of Li's life are left out here, but then she's not telling her life story, really. She's telling the story of food in her life, and the place of food here is essentially that of metaphor and emotion, linking aspects of her family experiences to her increasing exploration of her own identity. That identity, part of a Chinese immigrant family in the US, simultaneously part of both cultures and not entirely belonging to either, changes over time as Li becomes more interested in her Chinese roots. 

That in itself isn't a particularly original story. It's one that many people live every day, but what makes this book so interesting is the sustained focus on food as a lens by which identity can be examined. (There are a handful of recipes included, scattered at the end of most chapters, and if my vegetarian self, who shares Li's childhood hatred of bok choy, isn't going to be making many of these for myself, I'm still a person who enjoys cooking and enjoys seeing how other people do it.) Li uses food to illustrate everything from the competition between first and second wives to festival celebrations, and for many of the memories collected here, food is the means of bringing together relationships that are often very strained indeed. There's a wonderful line: "Writing memoir involves observing people making you suffer and, usually much later, discovering what it is they've suffered that makes them insist you suffer too" (p. 219). As present as the relationship between daughter and mother and grandmother is here, the primary conflict is between Li and her father, and the slow uncovering of understanding that develops is perhaps more unidirectional than one would like, but is still immensely sympathetic to read.