Lindsey is defined by her dual identity. At home, she lives with her Chinese grandmother, but she herself was born and raised in America. She lives in San Francisco and works for a vegan magazine. She is not actually a vegan, but she hides that part of her identity from her coworkers who are passionately against eating meat. She meets a man named Michael Cartier and begins to feel something between them, but he is white, and she doubts her grandmother will approve.
In fact, she reports that her grandmother has been consistently trying to hook her up with one of her Mah-Jong partners' children. It is very important to the grandmother that Lindsey marry a Chinese man, but Lindsey does not feel the same way. She tells about her friends. Some of her Asian friends seem embarrassed by their Chinese heritage, but Lindsey is not embarrassed by her identity. Some of her white friends are equally frustrating. She tells about a white friend complaining about Asians forgetting that Lindsey is right there.
One day, as Lindsey is trying to settle the issue of her identity, her grandmother tells her that she is visiting their family back in China, and that she has already told the family that Lindsey will come to help her travel. Lindsey agrees and suddenly finds herself thrust back into the heritage of her family which she does not know from experience but does understand as her own. With this fresh insight, she draws conclusions about what it is like to be she calls an ABC, "American-born Chinese."
