Sour Heart Stories Jenny Zhang by Jenny Zhang 9780399589386, 0399589384 instant download after payment.

A fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank & subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. In this debut collection, she conjures the disturbing & often hilarious experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City. Her stories cut across generations & 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. 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, & a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God.

Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperilled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat — dumpster diving for food & scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck — these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion & moral courage, & a perverse sense of humour reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint. A darkly funny & intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, & return again