Bad Bad Girl
Oscillates between plainspoken narrative and bold, italicized dialogues between Gish and her kvetching dead mother. The conceit is risky but pays off. The imagined colloquies punctuate the prose like counter melodies ... The exchanges are edged with humor and skepticism: the mother scoffing at or replying brusquely to her daughter’s reminiscences, questions, speculations ... What transforms it into a transcendent work of art is Jen’s empathy for all her characters.
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Jen grapples with structure, presenting Bad Bad Girl as a collaboration cobbled from decades of psychological checkmates and physical abuse. The book’s power derives from a deeper tension: Jen is interrogating not her mother so much as the gulf between Chinese immigrants and their Americanized children, questioning whether an uneasy truce is even possible amid the long shadows of communism and diaspora ... The story of what it means to be American in an era of sweeping demographic change enlarges Bad Bad Girl, sweetened by comic touches and a final note of grace. If memory is the mother of the muses, as the Greek poet Hesiod observed, then perhaps a difficult mother is just the right muse for a memorable tale.
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Inventive, empathetic and at times humorous ... The novel’s strength lies in how Jen blends fact, fiction and emotional inquiry.
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