"The Kitchen God's Wife" is set largely in early 90s California and in China during World War II. San Francisco, the primary location used in the early chapters of the novel, has a significant Chinese-American population, with a significant proportion having moved during and following World War II, as Pearl's mother did, when restrictions on numbers were relaxed. The second part of the novel takes place in the lead-up to and during World War II, focusing on the lives of Chinese women under the Japanese occupation of China and the brutality inflicted on them by the occupying forces.