![]() ![]() Zhang’s characters are poor, or recently poor, or terrified of being poor again, and the girl protagonists of all these stories struggle for control over their own feelings and the various obligations of being a daughter in their family. Sour Heart never shies from anger, failure, or shit. ![]() Jumping from Brooklyn slumlord apartments to smelly family homes in Shanghai to lonely suburban single-families, through family histories and overheard gossip, Zhang’s stories probe the nested worlds immigrant children navigate. This echoing makes a strong statement on the mutability of history and how powerfully influential the stories we tell about ourselves can be. Characters reoccur, adding different points of view to events that carry different meanings for each. Shit-talking, sharp-eyed, first- and second-generation Chinese immigrant girls are telling the stories here. Each touches on the shame that comes with seeing too clearly, talking too loudly, and being angry and sad in a world that wants a decorative girl, if it wants a girl at all. The stories of Sour Heart, Zhang’s first collection of fiction, are filled with girls who know. ![]() Most people don’t even know, I said, weeping in the car. You always say I know I know I know, but you must DO. You know everything, my mother used to say to me. In Brooklyn writer Jenny Zhang’s 2014 chapbook, HAGS, Zhang offers the following conversation: ![]()
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