Description

A TIME "100 BEST" BOOK OF THE YEAR - BEST OF FALL: Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, People, Oprah Daily, Writer's Digest, W Magazine - 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

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 more loving to 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 even then 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! You don't know how to talk!"--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 immensely incisive as it is compassionate.