Rachel DeWoskin (born 1972,

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

) is an American actress and author who is a 2012 recipient of the

Alex Awards The Alex Awards annually recognize "ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18". Essentially, the award is a listing by the American Library Association parallel to its annual Best Books for Young A ...

. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

Early life and education

DeWoskin was raised in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...

, where she attended the alternative Community High School. The daughter of Kenneth DeWoskin, a

Sinology Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to th ...

professor at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and senior advisor to

Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of profession ...

, she majored in English and studied Chinese at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, graduating in 1994.

Career

Acting

She went to Beijing in 1994 to work as a public-relations consultant and later starred in a Chinese nighttime

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

, the hugely successful '' Foreign Babes in Beijing'', which was watched by approximately 600 million viewers. DeWoskin played the character of Jiexi. As

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

noted, the show was a "sort of Chinese counterpart to ''

Sex and the City ''Sex and the City'' is an American romantic comedy, romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star for HBO. An adaptation of Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (newspaper column), newspaper column and 1996 book anthology of the ...

'' revolving around Chinese-Western culture clashes." At the time, she was one of the few foreign actresses working in mainland China and was considered a sex symbol.

Writing

DeWoskin returned to the United States in 1999 and earned a master's degree in poetry from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

. In 2005, W. W. Norton published her memoir, '' Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China''. ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' commented that "DeWoskin's cleverly layered account thus charts parallel culture clashes, one that she experiences as a Western woman in modern China, and the other, a TV-ready version of the first, tailored to Chinese expectations."

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

purchased the film rights, and the project remains in production. The director and screen adaptor attached to the film is

Alice Wu Alice Wu (; born April 21, 1970) is an American film director and screenwriter, known for her films '' Saving Face'' (2004) and ''The Half of It'' (2020). Both of her films feature Chinese-American main characters and explore the lives of intel ...

. DeWoskin is also the author of five novels, ''Big Girl Small'' ( FSG 2011), ''Repeat After Me'' (Overlook 2009), ''Blind'' (

Penguin Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...

2014), ''Some Day We Will Fly'' (

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

2019) and ''Banshee'' (Dottir 2019). DeWoskin is married to playwright Zayd Dohrn, son of

Bernardine Dohrn Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) is a retired law professor and a former leader of the left-wing radical group Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn w ...

and

William Ayers William Charles Ayers (; born December 26, 1944) rose to prominence during the 1960s as a domestic terrorist. During the 1960s, Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground militant group, described by the FBI as a terrorist group. In 196 ...

. They have two daughters, Dalin (b. 2004) and Light (b. 2007).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dewoskin, Rachel American soap opera actresses Writers from Ann Arbor, Michigan Actresses from Michigan 1972 births Living people Columbia College (New York) alumni Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni Actors from Ann Arbor, Michigan Writers from Kyoto Actresses from Kyoto American women novelists American women memoirists 21st-century American memoirists 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American novelists 20th-century American actresses University of Chicago faculty