Confucius Says

Book excerpt: Confucius Says is a novel about caregiving for elderly parents. Cary, a middle-aged Chinese American, was brought up to believe in the Confucian virtue of filial piety: serving one's parents is a sacred duty that requires extreme sacrifice. Thus when Cary's parents become too feeble to live on their own, she takes them in with the blessing of her Caucasian husband, Steve. But the more Cary tries to please her parents, the crabbier they become. A string of crises drives Cary to the verge of a meltdown. She finally confronts the source of her troubles: Confucius. She reads the Book on Filial Piety to see what exactly Confucius says about the subject. To her surprise, she finds his sayings are quite the opposite of what she's been taught to believe. Liberated from her misconceptions, Cary rediscovers filial piety as a universal formula for a functional, loving modern family. Veronica Li, an immigrant from Hong Kong, received her B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and her master's in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University. Li was a journalist for the Asian Wall Street Journal and other organizations. She later joined the World Bank, for which she traveled extensively and got her inspiration for her thriller, Nightfall in Mogadishu. Her second book, Journey across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home, is a memoir of her mother's life.