Pain. Sorrow. Happiness. Love. Are these things caused by fate or are they caused by free will? Sometimes, it can be difficult to determine if things happen the way they do by what we decide or if it is up to fate. In The Kitchen God's Wife, the ideas of luck, fate, and destiny are constantly contrasted against self-determination, free choice, and will. For example, Winnie Louie, the narrator finds it as fate for her to meet Wen Fu but it was also her choice to stay loyal to him. To see Winnie as a creator of her own god also shows light on the idea of self-determination over the idea of fate. There must be a balance between fate and free will to have a balanced life.

Wen Fu, Winnie's husband, showed greatly how fate and self-determination came into play. When Peanut and Winnie went into the...