American writer Gish Jen is best known as the author of four critically acclaimed novels: Typical American (1991), Mona in the Promised Land (1996), The Love Wife (2004), and World and Town (2010). Although this interview focuses primarily on these novels, Jen is also the author of a work of nonfiction, Tigerwriting: Art, Culture and the Interdependent Self (2013), and the short story collections Who’s Irish (1999) and The Girl at the Baggage: Explaining the East and West Cultural Gap (2017). This interview was compiled from three conversations between Gish Jen and Hong Fang: two in May 2009 at Jen’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one in Fall 2012 when she visited Nanjing Normal University. It covers the themes of Jen’s novels as well as their different representations of issues in identity and choices of ethnicity, which are among the most important themes in contemporary American literature and culture. Jen believes that American identity is a personal choice and America is a nation made by immigrants and descendants of immigrants who have brought their different cultures to America as they settled in the land of their choosing. The varied cultures of the American immigrants are ingredients of this nation which has been known for its multiculturalism. In these conversations, Jen implies that America may embrace multiculturalism again, which makes this interview’s appearance in this issue a timely commentary.