STONY CREEK FORUM
GISH JEN
Author of Bad Bad Girl
IN CONVERSATION…
…about her work, about fiction and memoir and the relationship between the two, and about Bad Bad Girl.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 7 PM
Copies of the new, paperback edition of the book will be available for sale and signing. Courtesy of Breakwater Books, Guilford.
Refreshments will be served.
L.A. TIMES 15 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • TIME "100 BEST" • RUPAUL'S BOOK CLUB PICK • An engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.
“A transcendent work of art.” —Boston Globe
“Gish Jen has written the multigenerational mother-daughter epic of our new century.” —Junot Díaz
“Heart-piercingly personal. . . . Suffused with love.” —Los Angeles Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gish Jen's work has been included in The Best American Short Stories five times, including in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. A fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received NEA, Guggenheim, and Radcliffe fellowships, a Lannan Literary Award, and a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award. Her short work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and many anthologies; she has taught at Harvard University, NYU Shanghai, and other universities.
Bad Bad Girl is her sixth novel; her other books include two collections of short stories and two works of non-fiction, including publication of her Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.
ABOUT THE BOOK
My mother had died, but still I heard her voice. . .
Gish’s mother, Loo Shu-hsin, is born in 1924 to a wealthy Shanghai family whose girls are expected to restrain themselves. Her beloved nursemaid—far closer to her than her real mother—is torn from her even as she is constantly reprimanded: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” Sent to a modern Catholic school by her progressive father, she receives not only an English name—Agnes—but a first-rate education. To his delight, she excels. But proud as he is, he can only sigh, “Too bad. If you were a boy, you could accomplish a lot.” Agnes finds solace in books and in 1947 announces her intention to pursue a PhD in America. As the Communist revolution looms, she sets sail—never to return.
Lonely and adrift in New York, she begins dating Jen Chao-pe, an engineering student. They do their best to block out the increasingly dire plight of their families back home and successfully establish a new American life: Marriage! A house in the suburbs! A number one son! By the time Gish is born, though, the news from China is proving inescapable; their marriage is foundering; and Agnes, confronted with a strong-willed, outspoken daughter distinctly reminiscent of herself, is repeating the refrain—“Bad bad girl!”—as she recapitulates the harshness of her own childhood.
Spanning continents, generations, and cultures, Bad Bad Girl is a novel only Gish Jen could have written: genre-bending, courageous, wise, and as incisive as it is compassionate.
Bad Bad Girl is shocking, illuminating and in places truly heartbreaking. When a book contains all of that, does it really matter which category it falls into?”—The London Times
Source: Penguin Random House & Gishjen.com