The book interweaves a second generation Chinese American man's reflections on his upbringing in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s with an oral history shared by his mother, Poy Jen, and her migration from Toisan, Guangdong.

Lee reflects on his childhood in working class Chinatown, Chinese American participation in the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and race relations through the era.

The oral histories begin in the Southern Chinese farming villages of Toisan, where Poy Jen was born in 1926.

Poy Jen makes her mother eight promises before she leaves war-torn China to join her husband in America in 1950.

In late October 2007, the book won the 2007 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for outstanding and original contribution to multicultural literature.