comment on structure.

Paper Wife is structured in a straightforward manner. There are 27 individual chapters and one brief epilogue. Each chapter is left unnamed but is numbered, and each progresses in chronological order, beginning with the arrival of the matchmaker at Mei Ling’s ancestral village. From that point on, every chapter progresses forward in time, detailing Mei Ling’s journey to America and her adjustment to life there, with no flashbacks, narrative pauses, or any other such structural jump to differentiate one chapter from another.