![]() A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family and to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again. Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat - Dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck - these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God. ![]() ![]() Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Throughout Sour Heart, Zhang does not shy away from portraying girls who are not a hundred percent lovable a hundred percent of the timean approach not dissimilar from the one Dunham and Konner. ![]() A sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City - for listeners of Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Junot Díaz.Ī fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. ![]()
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