Order this book from Amazon.com The Kitchen God's Wife Amy Tan New York, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1991 | Winnie Louie, who fled China in 1949, tells her daughter the long-hiddens story of her early life, her marriage to the treacherous Wen Fu, her survival in times of war and revolution. One day, when I was nine or ten, I found a painting of a pretty woman, wearing a plain blue dress, her hair pulled back, looking straight ahead, so somber I almost did not recognize her. "Mama?" I called, and I truly thought she would look at me. I imagined her climbing out of the picture frame, looking as flat as her painting, asking me, "Weiwei treasure, what is this place with so many windows?" And I realized that was the kind of place my mother and I belonged to, only that kind of place, where things are thrown away. Even when I was older, I still felt that.