When Anchee Min came to the United States in 1984, she spoke little English. She had barely slipped through on a student visa granted by an American consul impressed with her "crazy determination" - a decidedly American trait, she recalls in her new memoir The Cooked Seed.

In her courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, "I dragged the composition topics into my own territory, against the backdrop of Chinese culture and history," she writes, "where I could make comparisons and comment intelligently. I wrote slowly with my baby English, but it worked."

Later, she found success with a similar formula in Red Azalea, her celebrated 2006 memoir in which she detailed her "cultural revolution" (1966-76) experience as an actress with Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio and her love affair with a woman, among other events.