What is Jennifer 8. Lee reading?

Jennifer 8. Lee is a metropolitan reporter at the New York Times, where she has worked for many years.

She harbors a deep obsession for Chinese food, the product of which is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, a book that explores how Chinese food is all-American, due out in March 2008.

Last week I asked her what she was reading. Read her reply at Writers Read.

Lee tagged fiction and non-fiction, including an acclaimed novel featured at The Page 99 Test, and a work of non-fiction that recently appeared at The Page 69 Test.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is currently being edited, so excerpts are not yet available. Lee has this placeholder paragraph until the excerpts are online:

I can tell you that the current draft has chapters on General Tso’s chicken (I meet his family in China!), chop suey (with a new theory on who invented it and why, it’s not the historically bantered-about theory), fortune cookies (surprises galore here), how delivery got started in New York City, why Jews love Chinese food (or as I like to say “Why is chow mein the chosen food of the chosen people?), and the hunt for the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world outside Greater China.

Visit the website for The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

Writers Read: Jennifer 8. Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue