A destitute daughter and parents bound together by genuine love, despite the father’s infidelity; a grandmother marked by the trauma of Communist China, snatching moments of freedom for her soul but unable to relate with honesty to her family; a girl born into a repeating cycle of emotional abuse, who is destined to repeat it; an increasingly horrific example of the over-sexualisation of pre-teens…all of them first-generation Chinese immigrants. Sour Heart is Jenny Zhang’s new collection of short fiction, and the first book to be published by Lena Dunham’s new Random House imprint, Lenny Books.
Continue reading Sour Heart
In the first story of this collection, the narrator/author’s grandmother (Abuelita), an artist, has her young granddaughters pose for her. In order to keep them from fidgeting, as she paints, she tells them increasingly gruesome Mexican fairytales; appalled and fascinated, they beg for more.
Continue reading Painting Their Portraits in Winter
I rarely read short stories, because I usually find (unless they’re linked together somehow, by more than just a theme) that it’s a lot harder to sink my teeth into them; however well-expressed, the ideas in them just can’t be developed to the same extent as novels. (There are exceptions, and my taste runs South American; Borges and Cortazar in particular.)
Continue reading Spoiled Brats
