Serica Storytellers: Gish Jen

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Award winning author Gish Jen visits the store for her latest novel, Bad Bad Girl, an engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. 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. She is joined alongside local writer and friend of the store, Daniel Tam-Claiborne, Deputy Director at the Serica Initiative.

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.

Gish Jen is the author of six novels, two book of stories, and two works of nonfiction. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her stories have been chosen for The Best American Short Stories five times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She and her husband split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Bad Bad Girl is her latest novel.

“Moving and healing.” —Marion Winik, Boston Globe

“Sharp and compassionate. . . . Some relationships are so complex that truth can’t do them justice.” —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

“What an amazing f***ing novel, wild like love and twice as revealing. Gish Jen has written the multigenerational mother-daughter epic of our new century. Bad Bad Girl spans decades, oceans, continents, generations, languages, showing us we can escape almost anything—except the voices of our parents. Intergenerational mother-daughter mayhem of the absolute best smartest vexing most moving kind.” —Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

★ “Astute and revelatory. . . . Throughout, the author blends sharp-witted autofiction with powerful images. . . . This is striking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

★ "A great novelist distills the truth of her mother’s life, and her own. . . . Lively. . . . Fully three-dimensional. . . . As portraits of tough mother-daughter relationships go, it’s as moving as they come.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

★ “Heartbreaking and stunning.” —Library Journal (starred)

★ “A uniquely faceted, cross-cultural mother-daughter drama of anguish, fracture, determination, humor, loyalty, and love. . . . Ravishingly vivid.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)

★ “Singular. . . . Extraordinary. . . . Strikingly authentic. . . . Both deeply personal and universally resonant. . . . Jen’s prose is precise, elegant, and often witty in a way that acts as a balm. . . . Bad Bad Girl is a powerful reminder that while death may silence voices, it cannot extinguish the conversations that continue in our hearts and minds. This book is imperative for anyone interested in immigrant experiences, the complexities of family, and the art of writing personal history.” —Elizabeth DeNoma, Shelf Awareness (starred)

“Gish Jen is the absolute master of extremely funny devastation.” —Jessie Gaynor, LitHub

“Reading Bad Bad Girl, I felt a deep ache for mothers and daughters divided by culture and silence. Gish Jen writes tenderly about a woman carrying old China in her bones while raising a child in America. This story shows how quiet courage can be, and how a ‘bad girl’ is often just a woman who refuses to vanish. Many will find comfort and recognition in these pages.” —Xinran Xue, author of The Good Women of China

“A tender, poignant family history, laced with sharp insight and quiet humour. Bad Bad Girl is not just the story of women who journeyed from the old world to the new, but also of the luminous, deeply personal world they carried within.” —Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China

“An unsentimental, insightful, and brutally honest account of Chinese family relationships, in China and the West.” —Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans