我与纽约

About the book

An ordinary life, honestly told

Part memoir and part collection of personal essays, 我与纽约 chronicles Shenzhan’s journey from Rongchang, a small town in Chongqing, southwestern China, to New York, where she pursued her education, matured, and gradually found her place in a city and country that were initially foreign to her.

Rather than a story of extraordinary achievement, the book is deliberately written from the perspective of an ordinary person. Through vividly textured accounts of study, work, friendship, relationships, home-building, and everyday encounters, it explores the uncertainties, challenges, and discoveries that accompany growing into oneself far from home.

New York provides both the setting and the emotional landscape of that journey. Over two decades, the city changes from an unfamiliar destination into home, and the places and people along the way become markers of a deeper transformation — of learning to live independently, navigate between cultures, and ultimately define a life on one’s own terms.

The story unfolds against a larger backdrop: a period of extraordinary globalization and expanding exchange between China and the United States, and two decades in which both countries — and the relationship between them — changed profoundly. The book does not attempt to tell that history from above. It offers one individual’s perspective as a footnote to an era ultimately composed of countless personal lives.

For readers who have left home, crossed cultures, started over somewhere unfamiliar, or simply wondered how they became the person they are today, it is an intimate reflection on the long and often unexpected journey of becoming oneself.

Contents

Inside the book

Chapter titles are shown in the original Chinese with descriptive English glosses.

Sample Chapter: The Road to Learning