Received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Illinois in 1989. After working briefly as a reporter for The Associated Press and "The Chicago Tribune", she earned a master's degree from the writing program of Johns Hopkins University in 1991. She published her first book, "Thread of the Silkworm" (Basic Books, 1995), when she was just 27. It told the story of Tsien Hsue-shen, a Chinese-born scientist deported from the US during the "Red Scare" era of right-wing Republican Sen.
Joseph McCarthy, who later founded that country's intercontinental missile program. Another of her books was "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History," published in 2003 by Viking.