Jenny Zhang

At the beginning I think, I'm not sure I'll finish this. The writing is of course a bit sour; mean and explicit and unlikable, which makes reading difficult but is also so interesting in small bits. I really struggled with the first few even while I enjoyed them intellectually.
But actually, what a journey. By the end I think, this is actually beautifully honest and uncomfortable and, dare I say it, sweet. While the stories could mostly all be of one person, they are of one family in a fragmented and cohesive way. And the truth of all the anger and sadness and discomfort and searching make the moments of family and identity that much stronger. Of course, I also like sour fruit.… (meer)

Sour Heart is a linked series of short stories by New York writer Jenny Zhang. Each story centres on a young Asian-American girl trying to come to terms with life as part of an immigrant family, and the burden of her parents' expectations. The parents and grandparents in these stories left China during the Cultural Revolution or around the time of the Tiananmen Square uprising, but their children have little understanding of China during that time.

The girls are mostly on the cusp of puberty and are coming to terms with their sexual awakening as well as their various family dramas. The living conditions that they undergo seem horrendous; a reminder that New York a few decades ago was an extremely unsalubrious place.

As a middle-aged white male, I'm obviously not the target demographic for this book, however I enjoyed all of these stories.… (meer)

All four essays were quite different, and quite good. Each brought quite a personal touch to the discussion of one of the March sisters, comparisons with the author's own lives from larger things like a whole upbringing, to smaller things like choosing a single dress to wear to an awkward social function.

Got some nice kicks of nostalgia just from remembering Little Women itself, and it was interesting to learn about Louisa May Alcott's life, which I didn't know much about before, besides the fact that she based the Marches heavily on her own family.

I don't think the essays were too short, exactly, but the book is a thin volume and it did speed by-- it makes me want essays on Marmee and Laurie and Aunt March too! The only one of the four authors I had read before was Carmen Maria Machado, but this makes me want to go out and pick up the other essayists' previous work.… (meer)