Sour Heart: Stories - Jenny Zhang

nA sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City--for readers of Zadie Smith and Helen Oyeyemi. nWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction - Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award n nNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker - NPR - O: The Oprah Magazine - The Guardian - Esquire - New York - BuzzFeed n nA fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. Her stories cut across generations and 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; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God. n n Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat--dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck--these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again. n n Praise for Sour Heart n n Jenny Zhang's] coming-of-age tales are coarse and funny, sweet and sour, told in language that's rough-hewn yet pulsating with energy.--USA Today n nOne of the knockout fiction debuts of the year.--New York n n Compelling writing about what it means to be a teenager... It's brilliant, it's dark, but it's also humorous and filled with love.--Isaac Fitzgerald, Today n n A] combustible collection... in a class of its own.--Booklist (starred review) n n Gorgeous and grotesque... a] tremendous debut.--Slaten