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Summary Of The Fortune Cookie By Jennifer Lee

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Summary Of The Fortune Cookie By Jennifer Lee
Description and Summary
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles followed the author, Jennifer Lee’s, journey to discovering why Chinese food was present in America and other countries around the world. She investigated the origins of chop suey, General Tso’s chicken and most importantly, the fortune cookie. Her inspiration for her journey arose when mysteriously, 110 people won the lottery, and they stated that it was because of a fortune cookie bearing the winning numbers. Through her travels, Jennifer Lee learned that the Chinese American cuisine eaten in Chinese restaurants were not the actual foods consumed by those in China. They were actually American created meals with some inspiration from Chinese cooking. The fortune cookie was not even inspired by …show more content…
Furthermore, it addressed the topic of illegal trafficking of immigrants into kitchen servitude. Lee gave a great example of trafficking when she recalled a story about a young 16 year old boy’s struggle to migrate from China to the US. The young boy not only had a gruesome travel experience but also spent years in jail for illegal immigration before being released . For most Chinese immigrants, they come to the US without knowledge of the English language, and most decide to work in restaurants. However, because of the widespread migration of those from China, Chinese restaurants have been a major success in many countries.

Analysis The main point Jennifer Lee was trying to get across was that Chinese food eaten by Americans in the US are not from China. She used examples such as her adventures in finding the origins of chop suey, General Tso’s Chicken, and the fortune cookie to support this claim. The author stated, “” Although fortune cookies are thought of as Chinese, it actually originated from a Japanese background.

Themes of Geography In the book, all of the five themes of geography are
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