| International Standard Book Number |
9780593803745 electronic book
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| International Standard Book Number |
9780593803738 hardcover
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| International Standard Book Number |
0593803736 hardcover
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| Personal Name |
Jen, Gish, author.
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| Title Statement |
Bad bad girl : a novel / Gish Jen.
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| Edition Statement |
First hardcover edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.
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| Physical Description |
xiii, 323 pages ; 25 cm.
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| General Note |
"A Borzoi book."
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| Summary, Etc. |
"Gish's mother -- Loo Shu-hsin -- is born in 1924 to a wealthy Shanghai family where girls are expected to behave and be quiet. Every act of disobedience prompts the same reprimand: "Bad bad girl! You don't know how to talk!" She gets sent to Catholic school, where she is baptized, re-named for St. Agnes, and, unusually for a girl, given an internationally-minded education. Still, her father would say, "Too bad. If you were a boy, you could accomplish a lot." Aggie finds solace in books, reading every night with a flashlight and an English-Chinese dictionary, before announcing her intention to pursue a Ph.D in America. It is 1947, and with the forces of Communist revolution on the horizon, she leaves -- never to return. Lonely and adrift in Manhattan, Aggie begins dating Chao-Pei, an engineering student also from Shanghai. While news of their country and their families grows increasingly dire, they set out to make a new life together: marriage, a number one son, a small house in the suburbs. By the time Gish is born, her parents' marriage is unraveling, and her mother, struggling to understand her strong-willed American daughter, is repeating the refrain that punctuated her own childhood: "Bad bad girl! You don't know how to talk!" Bad Bad Girl is a novel about a mother and a daughter forced to reckon with one another across decades of curiosity and ambition, elation and disappointment, intense intimacy and misunderstanding. Spanning continents and generations, this is a rich, heartbreaking portrait of two fierce women locked in a complicated life-long embrace"-- Provided by publisher.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Families Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Mothers and daughters Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Chinese Americans Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Chinese American families Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Generational trauma Fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Domestic fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Historical fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Biographical fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Novels.
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