Typical American

Zusatztext “Gish Jen has done much more than tell an immigrant story. . . . She has done it more and in some ways better than it has ever been done before.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review   “The immigrant experience will never be the same. . . . A comedy . . . a tragedy . . . a pure delight.” — The Boston Globe   “An irresistible novel . . . suspenseful! startling! heartrending! without ever losing its comic touch.” — Entertainment Weekly   “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 Informationen zum Autor Gish Jen is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and two books of nonfiction,  The Girl at the Baggage Claim and  Tiger Writing . Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She teaches from time to time in China and otherwise lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Klappentext From the beloved author of Mona in the Promised Land and The Love Wife comes this comic masterpiece! an insightful novel of immigrants experiencing the triumphs and trials of American life. Gish Jen reinvents the American immigrant story through the Chang family! who first come to the United States with no intention of staying. When the Communists assume control of China in 1949! though! Ralph Chang! his sister Theresa! and his wife Helen! find themselves in a crisis. At first! they cling to their old-world ideas of themselves. But as they begin to dream the American dream of self-invention! they move poignantly and ironically from people who disparage all that is "typical American" to people who might be seen as typically American themselves. With droll humor and a deep empathy for her characters! Gish Jen creates here a superbly engrossing story that resonates with wit and wisdom even as it challenges the reader to reconsider what a typical American might be today. A BOYWITH HIS HANDSOVER HIS EARSIT'S AN American story: Before he was a thinker, or a doer, or an engineer, much less an imagineer like his self-made-millionaire friend Grover Ding, Ralph Chang was just a small boy in China, struggling to grow up his father's son. We meet him at age six. He doesn't know where or what America is, but he does know, already, that he's got round ears that stick out like the sideview mirrors of the only car in town--his father's. Often he wakes up to find himself tied by his ears to a bedpost, or else he finds loops of string around them, to which are attached dead bugs. "Earrings!" his cousins laugh. His mother tells him something like, It's only a phase. (This is in Shanghainese.) After a while the other boys will grow up, she says, he should ignore them. Until they grow up? he thinks, and instead--more sensibly--walks around covering his ears with his hands. He presses them back, hoping to train them to bring him less pain. Silly boy! Everyone teases him except his mother, who pleads patiently."That's not the way." She frowns. "Are you listening?" He nods, hands over his ears."How can you listen with your hands over your ears?"He shrugs. "I'm listening."Back and forth. Until finally, irked, she says what his tutor always says, "You listen but don't hear!"--distinguishing, the way the Chinese will, between effort and result. Verbs in English are simple. One listens. After all, why should a listening person not hear? What's taken for granted in English, though, is spelled out in Chinese; there's even a verb construction for this purpose. Ting de jian in Mandarin means, one listens and hears. Ting bu jian means, one listens but fails to hear. People hear what they can, see what they can, do what they...

Product details

• Authors: Gish Jen
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.01.2008
• EAN: 9780307389220
• ISBN: 978-0-307-38922-0
• No. of pages: 296
• Dimensions: 127 mm x 203 mm x 19 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature