Understanding Gish Jen / Jennifer Ann Ho.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ho, Jennifer Ann, 1970- author.

Series:

Understanding contemporary American literature.

Understanding contemporary American literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jen, Gish--Criticism and interpretation.

Jen, Gish.

Jen, Gish--Political and social views.

Asian Americans in literature.

Immigrants in literature.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (150 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia, South Carolina : The University of South Carolina Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Jennifer Ann Ho introduces readers to a "typical American" writer, Gish Jen, the author of four novels, Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife, and World and Town; a collection of short stories, Who's Irish?; and a collection of lectures, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self. Jen writes with an engaging, sardonic, and imaginative voice illuminating themes common to the American experience: immigration, assimilation, individualism, the freedom to choose one's path in life, and the complicated relationships that we have with our families and our communities. A second-generation Chinese American, Jen is widely recognized as an important American literary voice, at once accessible, philosophical, and thought-provoking. In addition to her novels, she has published widely in periodicals such as the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Yale Review. Ho traces the evolution of Jen's career, her themes, and the development of her narrative voice. In the process she shows why Jen's observations about life in the United States, though revealed through the perspectives of her Asian American and Asian immigrant characters, resonate with a variety of audiences who find themselves reflected in Jen's accounts of love, grief, desire, disappointment, and the general domestic experiences that shape all our lives. Following a brief biographical sketch, Ho examines each of Jen's major works, showing how she traces the transformation of immigrant dreams into mundane life, explores the limits of self-identification, and characterizes problems of cross-national communication alongside the universal problems of aging and generational conflict. Looking beyond Jen's fiction work, a final chapter examines her essays and her concerns and stature as a public intellectual, and detailed primary and secondary bibliographies provide a valuable point of departure for both teaching and future scholarship"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1 Understanding Gish Jen; Chapter 2 Typical American: Immigrant American Dreams; Chapter 3 Mona in the Promised Land: Switching and Choosing One's Identity; Chapter 4 Who's Irish? The Short Fiction of Gish Jen; Chapter 5 The Love Wife: Polyphonic Voices of the American Family; Chapter 6 World and Town: Growing Old in a Global New World Order; Chapter 7 Tiger Writing and Other Essays: Gish Jen as Public Intellectual; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; O; P; R; S; T; U; W; Y

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781611175899

1611175895

OCLC:

928894943