A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "Typical American"

A Study Guide for Gish Jen's

Author: Gale, Cengage Learning

Publisher: Gale Cengage Learning

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 23

ISBN-13: 1410361462

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A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "Typical American," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

Typical American

Typical American PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2014-11-11

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0547524099

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This “irresistible novel” of Chinese immigrants navigating the American dream is “startling [and] heartrending, without ever losing its comic touch” (Entertainment Weekly). Gish Jen reinvents the American immigrant story through the Chang family, who first come to the United States with no intention of staying. But when the Communists assume control of China in 1949, Ralph Chang, his sister Theresa, and his wife Helen find themselves in a crisis, struggling to cling to their old-world ideas of themselves. But soon they begin to dream the American dream of self-invention. They transform, poignantly and ironically, from people who disparage all that is “typical American” to people who aspire to the American ideal. With droll humor and a deep empathy for her characters, Gish Jen creates a superbly engrossing story that sparkles with wit while challenging the reader to reconsider what it means to be a typical American. “No paraphrase could capture the intelligence of Gish Jen’s prose, its epigrammatic sweep and swiftness . . . . The author just keeps coming at you line after stunning line.” —The New York Times Book Review

A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "The White Umbrella"

A Study Guide for Gish Jen's

Author: Gale, Cengage Learning

Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning

Published:

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 141034617X

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A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "The White Umbrella," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

The Girl at the Baggage Claim

The Girl at the Baggage Claim PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1101947829

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"A ... study of the different idea Asians and Westerners have of the self and how this plays out in our differing approaches to art, learning, politics, business, and almost everything else"--

The Resisters

The Resisters PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0525657215

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"The Resisters is palpably loving, smart, funny, and desperately unsettling. The novel should be required reading for the country both as a cautionary tale and because it is a stone-cold masterpiece. This is Gish Jen's moment. She has pitched a perfect game." --Ann Patchett The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet: one part artificial intelligence, one part surveillance technology, and oddly human--even funny. The people: Divided. The angel-fair "Netted" have jobs, and literally occupy the high ground. The "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on water if they're not. The story: To a Surplus couple--he once a professor, she still a lawyer--is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten, she can hit whatever target she likes. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league. When AutoAmerica rejoins the Olympics, though--with a special eye on beating ChinRussia--Gwen attracts interest. Soon she finds herself playing ball with the Netted even as her mother challenges the very foundations of this divided society. A moving and important story of an America that seems ever more possible, The Resisters is also the story of one family struggling to maintain its humanity and normalcy in circumstances that threaten their every value--as well as their very existence. Extraordinary and ordinary, charming and electrifying, this is Gish Jen at her most irresistible.

Tiger Writing

Tiger Writing PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0674072839

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In three pieces originally delivered as special lectures, draws on the biography of the author's father as well as the evolution of her own work to contrast Western and Eastern ideas of self-narration and interdependency.

World and Town

World and Town PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-10-04

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0307473309

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The award-winning author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon and The Resisters delivers “[a] triumph of a novel.... Jen reflects America, at its best, its worst, its most vulnerable” (The Miami Herald), and asks deep questions about religion, love, home, and meaning. Hattie Kong, a retired teacher and a descendant of Confucius, has decided that it’s time to start over. She moves to the peaceful New England town of Riverlake, a place that once represented the rock-solid base of American life. Instead of quietude, Hattie discovers a town challenged by cell-phone towers, chain stores, and struggling farms. Soon Hattie is joined by an immigrant Cambodian family on the run, and—quite unexpectedly—Carter Hatch, a love from her past.

The Love Wife

The Love Wife PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2004-09-14

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1400043794

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From the massively talented Gish Jen comes a barbed, moving, and stylistically dazzling new novel about the elusive nature of kinship. The Wongs describe themselves as a “half half” family, but the actual fractions are more complicated, given Carnegie’s Chinese heritage, his wife Blondie’s WASP background, and the various ethnic permutations of their adopted and biological children. Into this new American family comes a volatile new member.Her name is Lanlan. She is Carnegie’s Mainland Chinese relative, a tough, surprisingly lovely survivor of the Cultural Revolution, who comes courtesy of Carnegie’s mother’s will. Is Lanlan a very good nanny, a heartless climber, or a posthumous gift from a formidable mother who never stopped wanting her son to marry a nice Chinese girl? Rich in insight, buoyed by humor, The Love Wife is a hugely satisfying work.

Who's Irish?

Who's Irish? PDF

Author: Gish Jen

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-08-29

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0307826546

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In this dazzling collection of short stories, the award-winning author of the acclaimed novels Thank You, Mr. Nixon and Mona in the Promised Land—presents a "sparkling ... gently satiric look at the American Dream and its fallout on those who pursue it" (The New York Times). The stories in Who's Irish? show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it. With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar—and as strange—as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves.

A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "What Means Switch"

A Study Guide for Gish Jen's

Author: Gale, Cengage Learning

Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning

Published:

Total Pages: 23

ISBN-13: 141034276X

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A Study Guide for Gish Jen's "What Means Switch," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.