Cultural identity
For Lindsey it is very natural and easy to appreciate her Chinese cultural identity, but she was actually born in America and also identifies very deeply with the American aspect of her cultural identity. For her grandmother, though, Lindsey is clearly a proper Chinese girl and should live in accordance with Chinese ideas. This makes their relationship a little tense, but still amicable. Lindsey must navigate her emotional identity and discover who she is in this cultural assemblage.
Ethnicity and family
For Lindsey's grandmother, it makes obvious sense to just marry someone of the same ethnicity. To Lindsey, that is actually fairly offensive, but she knows that her grandmother does not mean to be offensive; it is just a cultural opinion. She actually has a thing for this white coworker at her magazine, and sometimes entertains thoughts about romance and family with him, wondering of course if it would lead to disappointment and conflict with her grandmother. They see the issue rather differently.
Duty and internal conflict
Lindsey's character is also marked by other internal conflicts as well. For instance, she lives with two different senses of identity, the person she is as home with her thoroughly Chinese grandmother, and the person she is at work with her friends and colleagues. At work, she pretends to be vegan, but at home, she eats meat. She hangs out with friends who betray one part of her identity or another, sometimes on accident. The ultimate moment of this theme in the novel is when she goes to China and faces that cultural heritage head on, because that takes her internal conflict to a point of epiphany.
