Born American

Sasha was born not in the United States but in China, and she arrived there during a time of great economic and political distress. In the three years after her birth in 1956, a massive, politically in-duced famine left upwards of 30 million Chinese people dead. Sev-eral years later, communist party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the disastrous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a massive, decade-long political campaign that turned millions of China's most talented and potentially productive citizens into enemies of the state.

Sasha says that being a citizen of the United States has allowed her to become more Chinese. The more American she becomes the prouder she is of her Chinese heritage, the more she is able to re-turn to its traditional Confucian values. Here in the United States, she says, she can be both American and Chinese. And as everyone who knows her can surely attest, the rebel in her remains, more daring than devout.

Welcome home, Sasha Gong.