What do you think?
Rate this book
Sour Heart
A debut story collection that plunges readers into the hearts of adolescent girls growing up in New York City, from poet and National Magazine Award nominee Jenny Zhang.
Centered on a community of immigrants who have traded their endangered lives as artists in China and Taiwan for the constant struggle of life at the poverty line in 1990s New York City, Zhang’s exhilarating collection examines the many ways that family and history can weigh us down and also lift us up. From the young woman coming to terms with her grandmother’s role in the Cultural Revolution to the daughter struggling to understand where her family ends and she begins, to the girl discovering the power of her body to inspire and destroy, these seven vibrant stories illuminate the complex and messy inner lives of girls struggling to define themselves. Fueled by Zhang’s singular voice and sly humor, this collection introduces Zhang as a bright and devastating force in literary fiction.
Centered on a community of immigrants who have traded their endangered lives as artists in China and Taiwan for the constant struggle of life at the poverty line in 1990s New York City, Zhang’s exhilarating collection examines the many ways that family and history can weigh us down and also lift us up. From the young woman coming to terms with her grandmother’s role in the Cultural Revolution to the daughter struggling to understand where her family ends and she begins, to the girl discovering the power of her body to inspire and destroy, these seven vibrant stories illuminate the complex and messy inner lives of girls struggling to define themselves. Fueled by Zhang’s singular voice and sly humor, this collection introduces Zhang as a bright and devastating force in literary fiction.
308 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2017
765 people are currently reading
21973 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Zhang
29 books504 followersJenny Zhang is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States. She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,095 reviews
February 3, 2019
An evocative, sometimes twisted, yet all together moving short story collection about Asian immigrants living in New York. Sour Heart has a not super high average rating on Goodreads, and I wonder what that average rating would look like across my fellow Asians, because as a son of Vietnamese immigrants, I felt so seen at times while reading this, even though Jenny Zhang's characters embody the Chinese American experience and not the Vietnamese American one. I give huge props to Zhang for crafting a collection that unapologetically centers young Asian American girls' perspectives, such a rarity in the predominately white publishing industry. Furthermore, she imbues these girls' with such authentic spirit: they are loving, cruel, desiring of attention and belonging, immature, and resilient. Zhang smashes the model minority myth and offers a more honest view into the lives and relationships of Asian immigrants.
Two stories in particular, "We Love You Crispina," and "The Evolution of My Brother," took my breath away. The way Zhang writes about the fierce, complicated love between Asian family members in these two stories, and across the whole collection, shows her appreciation of struggle, nuance, and the fleeting yet heartrending power of human connection. Sour Heart just feels so bold. I love it for its boldness, even if that boldness may have distanced me from a few of the less straightforward stories and may turn away readers who cringe at bodily functions and violence (yet still feel drawn to Game of Thrones, hm).
Overall, recommended to those who want a short story collection full of messiness and heart. Sour Heart kinda reminded me of Melissa Broder's work, like So Sad Today , as well as Weike Wang's Chemistry , though Zhang has a voice all of her own. I admire her skill with words, her tenacity, and her use of her voice to speak up about injustices in society, and I look forward to reading her next effort.
Two stories in particular, "We Love You Crispina," and "The Evolution of My Brother," took my breath away. The way Zhang writes about the fierce, complicated love between Asian family members in these two stories, and across the whole collection, shows her appreciation of struggle, nuance, and the fleeting yet heartrending power of human connection. Sour Heart just feels so bold. I love it for its boldness, even if that boldness may have distanced me from a few of the less straightforward stories and may turn away readers who cringe at bodily functions and violence (yet still feel drawn to Game of Thrones, hm).
Overall, recommended to those who want a short story collection full of messiness and heart. Sour Heart kinda reminded me of Melissa Broder's work, like So Sad Today , as well as Weike Wang's Chemistry , though Zhang has a voice all of her own. I admire her skill with words, her tenacity, and her use of her voice to speak up about injustices in society, and I look forward to reading her next effort.
January 14, 2018
It didn’t take but a second to feel the dynamics of just how ‘sour’ the stories were going to be in “Sour Heart”....
The tone of these stories are told with so much sarcasm- that I found it hard to tap into my genuine compassionate emotions. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling half the time.
The writing gets right up in your face -cockroaches in the bedsheets - depressing and disturbing details for any child to grow up with - in any country.
There was definitely a long arms distance from telling any of these stories ‘straight’. Yet the trauma was over-the-top for these Chinese immigrant children and their families.
It was easier to use vulgar language than to share gut wrenching feelings.
On one hand - it’s clear - these children - the narrator’s of each story did not want people looking at them and pitying them....but with so much swearing- shit this and shit that...it made it hard to keep a warm heart for them. —
It’s as if the purpose of these stories ‘was’ to focus on “life’s Sour, so suck on those lemons”.... and f#%k you!
So... on one hand - the stories ‘did’ hold my interest ‘because’ of the ‘almost’ shock-writing ....bleak situations - but they were all kind of the same - same tone - lacking even a little sincere sadness on ‘their’ part.
Eye-catching writing - and Sour stories = “Sour Heart”.
The tone of these stories are told with so much sarcasm- that I found it hard to tap into my genuine compassionate emotions. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling half the time.
The writing gets right up in your face -cockroaches in the bedsheets - depressing and disturbing details for any child to grow up with - in any country.
There was definitely a long arms distance from telling any of these stories ‘straight’. Yet the trauma was over-the-top for these Chinese immigrant children and their families.
It was easier to use vulgar language than to share gut wrenching feelings.
On one hand - it’s clear - these children - the narrator’s of each story did not want people looking at them and pitying them....but with so much swearing- shit this and shit that...it made it hard to keep a warm heart for them. —
It’s as if the purpose of these stories ‘was’ to focus on “life’s Sour, so suck on those lemons”.... and f#%k you!
So... on one hand - the stories ‘did’ hold my interest ‘because’ of the ‘almost’ shock-writing ....bleak situations - but they were all kind of the same - same tone - lacking even a little sincere sadness on ‘their’ part.
Eye-catching writing - and Sour stories = “Sour Heart”.
August 21, 2017
3.5 stars. Sour Heart is a hard one to rate. Lots I liked and lots I disliked about this collection of linked short stories. Each story is told from the point of view of a young girl who's family has immigrated from China to the United States, taking place primarily during the 1990s. The stories are linked in that some of the girls have run into each other somehow or other through school or family, and the first and last stories deal with different points in time in the life of the same girl and her family.
What I liked: Zhang is a very sharp writer and observer. These are not sweet stories -- no surprise given the title. The main characters may be young, but their experiences at home and in the world are often harsh, and in turn the eye they cast on their families and surroundings is completely unsentimental and often also harsh. This doesn't mean that there is no love within the families depicted, but it is often love at a price or love that quickly turns bitter. Through her characters' eyes, Zhang is a keen observer and her writing is at times brilliant.
What I didn't like: While the characters and family dynamics are different, there is a sameness between the stories. One of the repeated themes is the harshness -- often graphically so -- between the kids. While raw and real once or twice, after a while it felt excessive. There is one story in particular featuring a couple of cruel nine year olds that feels over the top -- as though written for its shock value. After a while, it felt like too many keenly observant children bitter well beyond their years.
I'm landing on 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because I recognize Zhang's talent and I really enjoyed some of the stories but this is definitely not a book for everyone. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
What I liked: Zhang is a very sharp writer and observer. These are not sweet stories -- no surprise given the title. The main characters may be young, but their experiences at home and in the world are often harsh, and in turn the eye they cast on their families and surroundings is completely unsentimental and often also harsh. This doesn't mean that there is no love within the families depicted, but it is often love at a price or love that quickly turns bitter. Through her characters' eyes, Zhang is a keen observer and her writing is at times brilliant.
What I didn't like: While the characters and family dynamics are different, there is a sameness between the stories. One of the repeated themes is the harshness -- often graphically so -- between the kids. While raw and real once or twice, after a while it felt excessive. There is one story in particular featuring a couple of cruel nine year olds that feels over the top -- as though written for its shock value. After a while, it felt like too many keenly observant children bitter well beyond their years.
I'm landing on 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because I recognize Zhang's talent and I really enjoyed some of the stories but this is definitely not a book for everyone. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
November 20, 2023
These stories were well written. A few times I read a sentence and it beautifully described something I think or feel but hadn’t realised until reading it.
However I felt that some of the stories sort of run into each other and it was hard to truly distinguish between them.
However I felt that some of the stories sort of run into each other and it was hard to truly distinguish between them.
July 15, 2017
An intense collection of stories, each one told from the perspective of a young girl living in NYC in the 1990s with parents who had immigrated from Shanghai. The stories demonstrate the manifestations and aftermath of the trauma experienced by the parents in Mao era China and the varying coping mechanisms they utilize. Some parents drink excessively, others work such long hours such that they almost never see their children, while others cannot get enough of their children and are by their sides at all times. One father is physically abusive to his wife while another has an endless string of girlfriends. There is a grandmother who feels the only worthy thing in life is being a mother, so attempts to become the mother to her grandchildren, confabulating about the days when she breastfed them. She demands that they love her to an extreme. These are stories that show how the horrors of a generation (the Chinese in 1960's China) affect future generations of children (American-Chinese growing up in NYC in the 1990s.)
It is about the children of immigrants in a country where English is not their primary language. It is about the interaction of these girls with both their families and the outside world. One girl is made to go back to ESL classes with each move and new school district, even though she has placed out them them repeatedly. There is an intensity to childhood friendships, a pushing and pulling, a competition that feels far more negative than positive. The stories delve into the girls' exploration of their bodies and developing understanding of sex. It is often vulgar and disturbing. The emotional aspect of keeping up with peers about sex and foul language is a weight on some of these girls. The language the children use, both in conversation with each other and with their parents, is often angry and vulgar. There is desperation and depression felt through these characters. These girls are coming of age, learning about themselves and their bodies, learning about their place in the world. It is all at once confusing, disastrous and exciting for them.
In addition to portraying 1990's NYC, the author offers glimpses of the year 1966 in China, when schools were out and children ran wild. The children were given the freedom and power to turn on any adult, accuse them of being counterrevolutionary, and proceed to torture and even kill them. One disturbing scene had a teacher tortured while tied to a tree by her students out of revenge for shaming one of the students in school. Anyone could be named counterrevolutionary. Particularly, anyone who wore their hair long and loose, anyone thought to be an intellectual, a member of the bourgeois class... or simply as a personal vendetta.
The writing is marvelous. Jenny Zhang is a masterful storyteller. However, the content is graphic. It is often horrifying, disturbing and seemingly distasteful. There is no sugar coating on these stories. These stories are full of grit, grime and dirt. There is anger, depression, sadness and sometimes joy. For me, Zhang was a unique original voice. I am glad I read these stories, but I caution others who might be sensitive to foul language or graphic subject matter. Sour Heart is the first book to be published with the LENNY imprint, a new imprint, in partnership with Random House, led by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
For discussion questions, please see: http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=1920.
It is about the children of immigrants in a country where English is not their primary language. It is about the interaction of these girls with both their families and the outside world. One girl is made to go back to ESL classes with each move and new school district, even though she has placed out them them repeatedly. There is an intensity to childhood friendships, a pushing and pulling, a competition that feels far more negative than positive. The stories delve into the girls' exploration of their bodies and developing understanding of sex. It is often vulgar and disturbing. The emotional aspect of keeping up with peers about sex and foul language is a weight on some of these girls. The language the children use, both in conversation with each other and with their parents, is often angry and vulgar. There is desperation and depression felt through these characters. These girls are coming of age, learning about themselves and their bodies, learning about their place in the world. It is all at once confusing, disastrous and exciting for them.
In addition to portraying 1990's NYC, the author offers glimpses of the year 1966 in China, when schools were out and children ran wild. The children were given the freedom and power to turn on any adult, accuse them of being counterrevolutionary, and proceed to torture and even kill them. One disturbing scene had a teacher tortured while tied to a tree by her students out of revenge for shaming one of the students in school. Anyone could be named counterrevolutionary. Particularly, anyone who wore their hair long and loose, anyone thought to be an intellectual, a member of the bourgeois class... or simply as a personal vendetta.
The writing is marvelous. Jenny Zhang is a masterful storyteller. However, the content is graphic. It is often horrifying, disturbing and seemingly distasteful. There is no sugar coating on these stories. These stories are full of grit, grime and dirt. There is anger, depression, sadness and sometimes joy. For me, Zhang was a unique original voice. I am glad I read these stories, but I caution others who might be sensitive to foul language or graphic subject matter. Sour Heart is the first book to be published with the LENNY imprint, a new imprint, in partnership with Random House, led by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
For discussion questions, please see: http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=1920.
will-probably-not-finish
May 22, 2018Life is too short to finish a book I am so very much not enjoying. I find the stories to be mean-spirited, one-note, and unpleasant in an unkind way. I liked the breathlessness of the prose and the run-on sentences but could not get on-board with the plot or the characters.
March 9, 2021
this collection was by no means perfect. in spite of that, i want to push back against critiques surrounding its vulgarity, which i've seen a lot of in the reviews section for sour heart. i think it's more than okay to have a personal preference when it comes to crude content or language in the media that you consume, but to try to come at this crudeness from a moral or stylistic angle is not only extremely pretentious, but also nonsensical. given that this collection primarily follows preteen girls living below the poverty line, it'd be stranger if the stories read antiseptic, as though they'd been scrubbed clean of any bodily trauma and also the novelty of a child who's only just discovered cursing and sex.
i didn't take issue with any of the vulgarity in sour heart. i think it was very successful in what it set out to do, which was capture the first-person accounts of a handful of young chinese girls grappling with immigration and class and also growing up and into a body in front of an audience of family members. the stories are both dense and—in a way—barren, cramped, claustrophobic, innocent and wildly, intimately knowing.
the idea of following a handful of girls who, for the most part, hail from the same locale, cultural background, and sociopolitical circumstances—and who sometimes crossed paths in small, unseen ways—was both supremely clever and supremely challenging. it was clever because it provided a thematic through line that made the collection feel seamless and coherent. it was challenging, though, because this means, as an author, you have to work even harder to make each short story distinct from the last, which is one of the ways that sour heart falls short. every main character is around the same age, inhabits the same setting, is contending with the same or similar cultural origin story, and in almost every case, the (central) family makeup is identical: mother, father, brother, sister (main character).
this means relying on nuances in personality, tone, and narrative detail to singularize each story, which was doubly difficult because every story is told in the first person, with the same or similar levels of preteen/prepubescent vulgarity (sometimes verbatim). with the exception of the first and second to last, the short stories began to run together. too often, sour heart relies on a childlike narrative style to set each story apart, which, more often than not, fails.
for the most part, the vulgarity adds to the unique magic of inhabiting a child's head, but in certain instances—like acts committed by a gang of korean kids in one short story—the nature of the vulgarity or violence really tries the reader's suspension of disbelief.
"why were they throwing bricks?" is, in my opinion, the most successful short story in zhang's collection. the pacing is perfect, it's distinct in its ability to flesh out each family member, and the content of the story is both (childishly) brusque and heartbreakingly real. if every story in sour heart read as this one had, this would be a five star rating, but i have to dock two stars for the larger part of this collection.
i didn't take issue with any of the vulgarity in sour heart. i think it was very successful in what it set out to do, which was capture the first-person accounts of a handful of young chinese girls grappling with immigration and class and also growing up and into a body in front of an audience of family members. the stories are both dense and—in a way—barren, cramped, claustrophobic, innocent and wildly, intimately knowing.
the idea of following a handful of girls who, for the most part, hail from the same locale, cultural background, and sociopolitical circumstances—and who sometimes crossed paths in small, unseen ways—was both supremely clever and supremely challenging. it was clever because it provided a thematic through line that made the collection feel seamless and coherent. it was challenging, though, because this means, as an author, you have to work even harder to make each short story distinct from the last, which is one of the ways that sour heart falls short. every main character is around the same age, inhabits the same setting, is contending with the same or similar cultural origin story, and in almost every case, the (central) family makeup is identical: mother, father, brother, sister (main character).
this means relying on nuances in personality, tone, and narrative detail to singularize each story, which was doubly difficult because every story is told in the first person, with the same or similar levels of preteen/prepubescent vulgarity (sometimes verbatim). with the exception of the first and second to last, the short stories began to run together. too often, sour heart relies on a childlike narrative style to set each story apart, which, more often than not, fails.
for the most part, the vulgarity adds to the unique magic of inhabiting a child's head, but in certain instances—like acts committed by a gang of korean kids in one short story—the nature of the vulgarity or violence really tries the reader's suspension of disbelief.
"why were they throwing bricks?" is, in my opinion, the most successful short story in zhang's collection. the pacing is perfect, it's distinct in its ability to flesh out each family member, and the content of the story is both (childishly) brusque and heartbreakingly real. if every story in sour heart read as this one had, this would be a five star rating, but i have to dock two stars for the larger part of this collection.
February 7, 2019
This collection of short stories is organised around an extremely interesting and original idea: each story is narrated by a child that is connected to the children (and adults) in the other stories through their families having shared a bedroom in the first difficult months after moving from China to the US. Sharing a mattress with one's parents, shared sleeping arrangements with other families: this is the universal immigrant experience, it seems. There are other common elements that run through the stories; mother-daughter relationships that are strong but also twisted and somewhat dysfunctional; grief over dashed hopes; a sense of overwhelming odds stacked against the characters; and at the same time, a sense of resilience and spiritedness.
The first story "We Love You Crispina" blew my head off with its rawness and directness. A young girl describes her experiences moving from one derelict, bug-infested house to another, with a dad that hooks a gilrfriend at every opportunity and a mum that finds this normal. Finding jobs, losing them, getting mugged, trying to be inventive with food, all this makes up the experience of the hard-up immigrant. Short, run-on sentences stylistically accentuate this experience, with the spirited young girl refusing to give in to the rhythms and demands of the new place.
The quality of the stories was not uniform, however, hence the three-star rating. I've found this is often a problem with short story collections: an amazing first piece is followed by more mediocre work. I think the short story genre should be taken more seriously, and not just as a stepping stone to novel-writing. However, I'll be interested to see what Jenny Zhang does next.
The first story "We Love You Crispina" blew my head off with its rawness and directness. A young girl describes her experiences moving from one derelict, bug-infested house to another, with a dad that hooks a gilrfriend at every opportunity and a mum that finds this normal. Finding jobs, losing them, getting mugged, trying to be inventive with food, all this makes up the experience of the hard-up immigrant. Short, run-on sentences stylistically accentuate this experience, with the spirited young girl refusing to give in to the rhythms and demands of the new place.
The quality of the stories was not uniform, however, hence the three-star rating. I've found this is often a problem with short story collections: an amazing first piece is followed by more mediocre work. I think the short story genre should be taken more seriously, and not just as a stepping stone to novel-writing. However, I'll be interested to see what Jenny Zhang does next.
August 30, 2017
When I saw this book was included in the LENNY imprint, associated with Lena Dunham, it made perfect sense to me. If you think of the criticisms of Lena's memoir particularly in how she talks openly about sexual exploration and her sister... if those elements bothered you, these are not the stories for you. Jenny Zhang writes about immigrants struggling to survive in New York, yes, but it's almost always from the perspective of the children. The way she writes about the violence of children made me uncomfortable, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. After the first story I wanted to just put it down and not return.
(Post-dated review.)
(Post-dated review.)
August 16, 2017
Zhang captures the confusion and angst of second generation Chinese Americans seemingly doomed to an unrepayable debt to parents who, in numerous instances, lived through/escaped unspeakable trauma during the Cultural Revolution (losing/leaving behind innumerable family members in the process) and worked/sacrificed endlessly upon arrival in America only to see their children slowly abandon and even become embarrassed by their heritage, their language, and their customs. I am impressed by the bold writing style, which aims not for 100% accuracy and commitment to historical detail but communicates instead, through alternating flagrant exaggeration, obscenity, and sweetness, a kind of emotional honesty which, unlike much work in this tradition, refuses to foreground melancholy and loss and instead embraces a broader, messier range of simultaneous feelings. Perhaps the highest praise I can give this collection (which reads more as a novel) is that as a confused and angsty second generation Chinese American, I felt, after reading this, more connected to both my parents and my people.
August 9, 2017
Full disclosure: I didn't finish this book. I decided to give Leny/Lena Dunham a second chance and began the book with positive expectations, but with a first story that vividly depicts two girls forcing a boy to rape another 4th grade girl after tying her to their bed (with no sense of remorse, just "we're young children exploring our sexuality!"), I wasn't exactly thrilled. Every story I read from the collection wandered without direction and seemed to pick up a new thread on every other page without fully finishing the theme/thought and ending with what I felt like was a lot unsaid and unexplored. It reads like sloppy writing that was done in short spurts. The portion of the book that I read relied a lot on what some would call poverty porn and sexual taboo without the great writing necessary to back it up. Sorry Jenny, maybe we'll get along better next time.
July 31, 2018
This book is such a tricky one to rate. It could have easily ranged between a 2 and a 5 star rating. Though there’s a lot I enjoyed in this collection, the brashness the raw unfiltered delivery of her words but some of it felt overtly outrageous.
A large portion of the book took me to some uncomfortable places not that I minded completely but they felt deliberately vulgar to add a certain shock value, to get the readers attention, a way to keep us readers feeling uneasy but also demanding our full attention. There’s a lot she needs to say, and she definitely delivers it with a thump to the head. This won’t be to everyone’s sour tastes there’s nothing sweet in this collection of stories. Luckily for me I didn’t mind feeling some discomfort as I also enjoyed her daring style of writing.
A large portion of the book took me to some uncomfortable places not that I minded completely but they felt deliberately vulgar to add a certain shock value, to get the readers attention, a way to keep us readers feeling uneasy but also demanding our full attention. There’s a lot she needs to say, and she definitely delivers it with a thump to the head. This won’t be to everyone’s sour tastes there’s nothing sweet in this collection of stories. Luckily for me I didn’t mind feeling some discomfort as I also enjoyed her daring style of writing.
April 1, 2017
Review forthcoming.
September 23, 2017
One story called The Evolution of My Brother made me cry - I've never read anything so perfectly describing what it's like to grow up with a sibling and then leave home and lose the closeness of that relationship.
need-to-finish
February 13, 2023love reading audiobooks until the author makes a stylistic choice to repeat some words and then I get “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO” screamed in my ears for a full minute…
July 13, 2017
“We Love You Crispina” (= first 13%): I enjoyed this story about the string of awful hovels a family of Chinese immigrants is forced to move between in early 1990s New York City. You’d think it would be unbearably sad reading about cockroaches and shared mattresses and a father’s mistress, but Zhang’s deadpan litanies are actually very funny: “After Woodside we moved to another floor, this time in my mom’s cousin’s friend’s sister’s apartment in Ocean Hill that would have been perfect except for the nights when rats ran over our faces while we were sleeping and even on the nights they didn’t, we were still being charged twice the cost of a shitty motel.”
I don’t know if it’s that I’m out of practice reading short story collections, but after I finished this first story of the book I felt absolutely no need to move on to the rest.
I don’t know if it’s that I’m out of practice reading short story collections, but after I finished this first story of the book I felt absolutely no need to move on to the rest.
February 7, 2017
I hated this so much that I'm raging against it. Yet another book that uses poverty porn and then taboo sexuality in the place of good writing. I am ANGRY at the fact that I read so much of this.
December 27, 2020
one of my favorite books of the year and all-time :sob: i can't wait to reread
September 29, 2017
'After dinner, everyone talked at each other and over each as if there were not enough hours left in the day to get everything out and so it all had to happen at the same time - the listening and the expressing and the laughing could not happen one after the other but instead had to coalesce on top of each other into a massive cloud of noise. My silence was conspicuous, it signaled something, and everyone wanted to dissect it and make an emergency out of it. I was quiet not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I was overwhelmed by it all, and I didn't want anyone to pity me or laugh at me or throw their hands up in the air at the absurdity of a Chinese person who couldn't speak Chinese.'
Sour heart, sour times indeed. This collection isn't for everybody but I love the sour and specific parts of it that don't appeal to all. I really could read a stream of consciousness anything from Jenny Zhang. It knocked me over and made me feel full. There are characters saying too much, not saying enough, not saying anything, doing too much, not doing enough, hovering like a helicopter, not being around to know what is even going on but still having too much of a presence anyway, and above all else, me feeling a lot of emotions for these people just trying to make a life for themselves that don't involve worrying day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, about how they're going to do anything without failing their family so completely. I could feel so, so much love radiating from these stories.
'I decided to try to do the thing my parents had been pushing for all along: be less attached to them. For years, when they encouraged me to go off on my own, I would think: So you do it too. Be less devoted to me, then. Don't love me so much that it becomes all I know.
How was I supposed to know that they would follow through on my dare? That they would actually push me away. You'll have to harden your heart against us, my mother used to say to me.'
ps: how wonderful it is that we don't get translations when people speak to one another. Most of the time you can infer what it is, of course. But when there's little bits of wordplay, just tiny moments, that feels like intimacy. (the mention of Teresa Teng anywhere will get me every time, by the way. I love her and was also devastated by her death.) it's a total coincidence but I was watching Kogonada's film, Columbus, just earlier this week, and in it John Cho speaks over the phone sometimes and we don't get subtitles - in that instance, unlike this collection, I didn't understand, but I liked that we weren't just given that. it's fine. :)
'"What makes you happy makes Mommy happy," she would always say to me, sometimes in Chinese, which I wasn't so good at, but I tried for her and for my father, and when I couldn't, I would answer them in English, which I also wasn't so good at, but it was understood that while I could still improve in either language, my parents could not, they were on a road to nowhere, the wall was right up against them, so it was up to me to get really good, it was up to me to shine and that scared me because I wanted to stay behind with them, I didn't want to go any further than they could go.'
July 26, 2017
Before I really start this review, I want to get this out of the way first: this book left me frustrated and disappointed.
After reading the first short story, which I enjoyed, I was looking forward to reading the rest of the stories in this book. It quickly became apparent though why We Love Crispina was the first story: it was the strongest and the editor knew that it would be lost if it was placed anywhere else in this book. From there, the language became crude and sexual. This wasn't something that frustrated me, just a warning to other readers. What did frustrate me though was that there was no distinction in the voices of the narrator from story to story. In fact, you could have told me that it was the same girl at different points in her life and I would have believed you.
I finally decided that the only way I was going to finish this book was to put it down and come back to it and read certain stories at specific points. I wish this book could have just focused on Christina, I could have read an entire novel about her and her family.
After reading the first short story, which I enjoyed, I was looking forward to reading the rest of the stories in this book. It quickly became apparent though why We Love Crispina was the first story: it was the strongest and the editor knew that it would be lost if it was placed anywhere else in this book. From there, the language became crude and sexual. This wasn't something that frustrated me, just a warning to other readers. What did frustrate me though was that there was no distinction in the voices of the narrator from story to story. In fact, you could have told me that it was the same girl at different points in her life and I would have believed you.
I finally decided that the only way I was going to finish this book was to put it down and come back to it and read certain stories at specific points. I wish this book could have just focused on Christina, I could have read an entire novel about her and her family.
August 25, 2021
SIGH, i think this one just wasn’t for me. i picked it up multiple times throughout the year and each time it felt like more of a chore to try and finish it (i hate to dnf so i always push through)
though there are a dozen stories about different girls in different families, the narrative voice sounded nearly the same each time and it all just blended together into nothingness for me
sour heart is going to be a polarizing read though, so don’t let my not-so-positive thoughts stop you from checking it out! maybe it will find its right audience with you :”)
though there are a dozen stories about different girls in different families, the narrative voice sounded nearly the same each time and it all just blended together into nothingness for me
sour heart is going to be a polarizing read though, so don’t let my not-so-positive thoughts stop you from checking it out! maybe it will find its right audience with you :”)
December 6, 2017
DNF ~halfway through
this book was tough for me. I'm all for more representation of complex narratives about asian families, but I think there's a difference between writing characters that are interesting/flawed/complicated/dealing with trauma and just portraying all chinese immigrant parents as erratic, cruel, and violent towards their children. the author seemed to be exploiting themes of poverty and abuse to try to make her stories seem edgy and shocking. I think this is her attempt to debunk the model minority myth but in a way that's not particularly thoughtful or substantive.
this book was tough for me. I'm all for more representation of complex narratives about asian families, but I think there's a difference between writing characters that are interesting/flawed/complicated/dealing with trauma and just portraying all chinese immigrant parents as erratic, cruel, and violent towards their children. the author seemed to be exploiting themes of poverty and abuse to try to make her stories seem edgy and shocking. I think this is her attempt to debunk the model minority myth but in a way that's not particularly thoughtful or substantive.
May 15, 2018
Sour Heart is one of those rare books that is both tough to get into, and tough to get out of. Jenny Zhang’s seven stories are all told by young women struggling with their own families, identities, and places in their oft-changing worlds. For me, this one contained both rocky moments and much content worth reading.
This is another book I’m reading for AAPI Heritage Month, as part of Hype Lit’s May Reading Challenge. Zhang’s narrators are all recent Chinese immigrants to America, who are constantly pulled back and forth from Shanghai to New York. These international relations are constant and fluid, but you can always see their seams—there is so much our narrators lose in translation, both here and abroad. There are many half-realized moments, where we see all that these girls will understand in a few years, and all that they never will learn as long as they live (how to connect your family through a diaspora, why we inherit our parents’ least desirable traits, etc.) In a late story, one character says “I knew too much and never enough,” which I think is the perfect way to phrase this specific unrest.
Understanding why these stories have to be frustrating (old relationships in new countries are HARD to maintain!) still didn’t keep me from being severely annoyed by many of these characters and their rambling. In “Our Mothers Before Them”, I felt that the teenage narrator couldn’t adequately explain and depict her selfish mother, leaving the older woman to seem dysfunctional for plot’s sake. Zhang is also extremely fond of run-ons, which make many of her otherwise striking passages overly emotional. This particular style is always tricky to nail, and given the young age of Sour Heart’s narrators, this book’s particular road to whininess is paved with drawn-out sentences.
As a final concern, many of the New York characters carry a healthy amount of racism towards other POC, namely their Latinx and Black neighbors. From my own experiences (as well as those of my friends from that particular city), many Asian-Americans express a heap of hostility and condescension to the minorities they consider to be less “model,” so while Zhang’s inclusion of these prejudices are honest, they’re almost too familiar. One story ends with two parents and their young child throwing rocks at the home of some black teens who stole from them, and it’s almost cathartic until you realize these are grown people retaliating against children who they have deemed their “bullies.” Let’s just say that everytime I read one of these scenes, I felt like I was being followed around a corner store. :(
Clearly, this collection has its pitfalls, but I still found a lot of touching moments in the stories. Jenny Zhang really details the burdens and benefits of having a codependent family, especially when said family has migrated away from each other. She balances the specific Chinese-American immigrant experience with re-explored truisms about coming-of-age, queer exploration, and dysfunctional family members. In Sour Heart’s seven stories, she has rendered an intricate portrait of the selfish ways we love those we are stuck with. I was glad to read it at this point in my life, and imagine many people with their own set of growing pains will be, too.
This is another book I’m reading for AAPI Heritage Month, as part of Hype Lit’s May Reading Challenge. Zhang’s narrators are all recent Chinese immigrants to America, who are constantly pulled back and forth from Shanghai to New York. These international relations are constant and fluid, but you can always see their seams—there is so much our narrators lose in translation, both here and abroad. There are many half-realized moments, where we see all that these girls will understand in a few years, and all that they never will learn as long as they live (how to connect your family through a diaspora, why we inherit our parents’ least desirable traits, etc.) In a late story, one character says “I knew too much and never enough,” which I think is the perfect way to phrase this specific unrest.
Understanding why these stories have to be frustrating (old relationships in new countries are HARD to maintain!) still didn’t keep me from being severely annoyed by many of these characters and their rambling. In “Our Mothers Before Them”, I felt that the teenage narrator couldn’t adequately explain and depict her selfish mother, leaving the older woman to seem dysfunctional for plot’s sake. Zhang is also extremely fond of run-ons, which make many of her otherwise striking passages overly emotional. This particular style is always tricky to nail, and given the young age of Sour Heart’s narrators, this book’s particular road to whininess is paved with drawn-out sentences.
As a final concern, many of the New York characters carry a healthy amount of racism towards other POC, namely their Latinx and Black neighbors. From my own experiences (as well as those of my friends from that particular city), many Asian-Americans express a heap of hostility and condescension to the minorities they consider to be less “model,” so while Zhang’s inclusion of these prejudices are honest, they’re almost too familiar. One story ends with two parents and their young child throwing rocks at the home of some black teens who stole from them, and it’s almost cathartic until you realize these are grown people retaliating against children who they have deemed their “bullies.” Let’s just say that everytime I read one of these scenes, I felt like I was being followed around a corner store. :(
Clearly, this collection has its pitfalls, but I still found a lot of touching moments in the stories. Jenny Zhang really details the burdens and benefits of having a codependent family, especially when said family has migrated away from each other. She balances the specific Chinese-American immigrant experience with re-explored truisms about coming-of-age, queer exploration, and dysfunctional family members. In Sour Heart’s seven stories, she has rendered an intricate portrait of the selfish ways we love those we are stuck with. I was glad to read it at this point in my life, and imagine many people with their own set of growing pains will be, too.
March 8, 2018
Actual rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
A frank, sometimes violent, but always engaging collection of short stories, Jenny Zhang's Sour Heart shows how immigrant life in 1990's New York impacted growing up, feeling at home, and family. It also connected six sour girls together, who reveled in their own emotions in drawn-out and breathtaking prose. I'm curious to see where Zhang will go from here despite some questionable terms used, and I'm definitely excited to find out.
"We Love You Crispina"-3.5 out of 5 stars: The intro to this one dragged on for a little bit, but by the time it got going, I started liking it. This story was about a girl named Christina and her parents living a very complicated life as immigrants in New York. A lot of stuff was conquered with this one: bitterness and desire on Christina's part, the urge to be like her parents and yet not want to due to the father's open polyamory, despite the love and sacrifices they give her, and the happiness in not having to sleep on a mattress that makes you itch until you bleed and not dumpster diving for your next meal. Trademarks of Zhang's style were revealed: long sentences and paragraphs that sometimes stretched for a little over a page long and harsh, biting humor with a raw core showing the bruises. This was a good start to the collection with a bittersweet ending .
The title comes from a banner Christina's father's class makes for her when she comes in to avoid her own school. Also, the terms of endearment Christina's parents call her match the title of this book and cover a wide variety of fruit that can be sour.
"The Empty the Empty the Empty"-4 out of 5 stars: This was definitely disturbing but absolutely captivating.
Lucy is the protagonist of this one, a precocious fourth grader who knows she's hot and already has a boyfriend who's "willing to fight for [her]." A lot of the story is focused on her sexual awakening along with the rest of her classmates in "pre-sex education sex education," and there's a lot of dirty things that happen . This also explores more complicated parental relationships, as Lucy's mother loves to take those less fortunate into the home (like Christina's family) while her dad works late doing Chinese food delivery and trying to get a degree in business to better the family. There's also a frustrated sibling relationship with Lucy and her older brother Eddie and him getting a girlfriend, and it all comes together with longing and emptiness and a desire for being perfect. It was interesting.
"Our Mothers Before Them"-2.5 out of 5 stars: This bit off a lot more than it could chew. Part flashback to 1966 in the heyday of the Chinese Cultural Revolution where kids became authority figures and terrorized adults, and part present day 1996 when seven-year-old Annie’s uncle comes to visit amidst an uneasy relationship with her mother, the mopey doubt of the older brother, and the constant arguing among the parents, this both tried to capture parallels among Annie’s grandmother and mother (hence the title) and showed how parental bonds can affect how children see the world. Unfortunately, I think the relationship between Annie and her uncle should’ve been the main focus instead of the obsessive tendencies of the mom. Violence in the past also became glorified as a result.
But the ending for this was a lot happier than the other two. That’s always a good thing.
Annie was related to Christina in a sense, because Christina’s mom was childhood friends with her dad who sold umbrellas from China in the streets. Christina also named her.
“The Evolution of My Brother”-4.5 out of 5 stars: There we go. This short story about a girl named Jenny (I see what Zhang did there) and her hot-and-cold relationship with her brother was fascinating. It felt like an actual experience, but since it's fiction, I'm not going to take the "THIS MUST BE TRUE" road just because Zhang used her name as the protagonist's here. Watching the horrifying things the brother became into all because of Jenny's violent tendencies, much to her own regret and shame, was heartbreaking and addicting. I wanted to know more.
I liked that we also spent time with the family and how they had initially struggled (dumpster diving alongside Christina's parents after the ending of the first story) before becoming better off than the other families that have been shown so far. The mother really wanted to treat her son as the baby forever, but it was just as unhealthy as some of the stuff Jenny and her little brother did together.
The only thing that's preventing this from getting five stars is some of the stuff that happened, including eating burned hair, dumping ice cold water through fingers in the doorway, and swallowing pennies. But still, this was pretty much excellent and the best story in this collection so far.
I also loved how this ended in present tense. It was a nice change of pace.
"My Days and Nights of Terrors"-2.5 out of 5 stars: This was another mixed bag. Zhang tried to make this story about Mande growing up and getting closer to God, her growing anxiety, her parents caught in a very abusive relationship, and her escaping a relationship with bully Fanpin, a girl briefly mentioned in the second story with having one boob bigger than the other. To me, Fanpin very much fell into the psychotic and deranged lesbian stereotype that I don’t like, but their friendship was interesting and I cackled with glee at rereading all the parts Zhang went over at the reading (the falling-out part of the friendship, the “I’m not talking about cats” line). Even the abrupt ending was fantastic
Even with some excellent passages, some of the best and funniest and most poignant of this collection, this was another one of the weakest short stories.
“Why Were They Throwing Bricks?”-4 out of 5 stars: This story about a girl named Stacey having to deal with her possessive and compulsive liar grandmother every time she visited her family was haunting and kept me on my toes. The change in mentality of Stacey’s younger brother, Allen, in terms of his relationship with his grandmother as he grew older was fascinating. So was the grandmother herself, someone who later Stacey recognized as lonely and needing her fear to be quelled and herself to be validated. That was a powerful point.
This story was one of the shortest, but it’ll be sticking with me for a long time.
Good thing Christina was mentioned and complaining about her itching yet again, because we return with her family in the last story.
“You Fell into the River and I Saved You!”-4 out of 5 stars: This brought things to a surprisingly happy and peaceful close. Set up in seven parts known as reunions, Christina enters conversations where her parents, younger sister Emily, and her cousin Fang reminisce on family history, what happened to Christina in China (including falling into a river, where the title comes from), and even bringing everyone on the family tree together for an ultimate gathering. I liked Christina's wry voice and how it had evolved from the childish neediness of her first story, and the vignettes of people talking felt different but needed after some of the disturbing things that happened throughout this collection. Even Zhang's sharp humor felt more in touch here instead of being interpreted as tasteless. Overall, Sour Heart ended well.
A full-length review was posted on my school newspaper’s website on October 9th, 2017.
The review was selected by Best of SNO on November 29th, 2017 as an example of the best in high school journalism in the nation.
A frank, sometimes violent, but always engaging collection of short stories, Jenny Zhang's Sour Heart shows how immigrant life in 1990's New York impacted growing up, feeling at home, and family. It also connected six sour girls together, who reveled in their own emotions in drawn-out and breathtaking prose. I'm curious to see where Zhang will go from here despite some questionable terms used, and I'm definitely excited to find out.
"We Love You Crispina"-3.5 out of 5 stars: The intro to this one dragged on for a little bit, but by the time it got going, I started liking it. This story was about a girl named Christina and her parents living a very complicated life as immigrants in New York. A lot of stuff was conquered with this one: bitterness and desire on Christina's part, the urge to be like her parents and yet not want to due to the father's open polyamory, despite the love and sacrifices they give her, and the happiness in not having to sleep on a mattress that makes you itch until you bleed and not dumpster diving for your next meal. Trademarks of Zhang's style were revealed: long sentences and paragraphs that sometimes stretched for a little over a page long and harsh, biting humor with a raw core showing the bruises. This was a good start to the collection with a bittersweet ending .
The title comes from a banner Christina's father's class makes for her when she comes in to avoid her own school. Also, the terms of endearment Christina's parents call her match the title of this book and cover a wide variety of fruit that can be sour.
"The Empty the Empty the Empty"-4 out of 5 stars: This was definitely disturbing but absolutely captivating.
Lucy is the protagonist of this one, a precocious fourth grader who knows she's hot and already has a boyfriend who's "willing to fight for [her]." A lot of the story is focused on her sexual awakening along with the rest of her classmates in "pre-sex education sex education," and there's a lot of dirty things that happen . This also explores more complicated parental relationships, as Lucy's mother loves to take those less fortunate into the home (like Christina's family) while her dad works late doing Chinese food delivery and trying to get a degree in business to better the family. There's also a frustrated sibling relationship with Lucy and her older brother Eddie and him getting a girlfriend, and it all comes together with longing and emptiness and a desire for being perfect. It was interesting.
"Our Mothers Before Them"-2.5 out of 5 stars: This bit off a lot more than it could chew. Part flashback to 1966 in the heyday of the Chinese Cultural Revolution where kids became authority figures and terrorized adults, and part present day 1996 when seven-year-old Annie’s uncle comes to visit amidst an uneasy relationship with her mother, the mopey doubt of the older brother, and the constant arguing among the parents, this both tried to capture parallels among Annie’s grandmother and mother (hence the title) and showed how parental bonds can affect how children see the world. Unfortunately, I think the relationship between Annie and her uncle should’ve been the main focus instead of the obsessive tendencies of the mom. Violence in the past also became glorified as a result.
But the ending for this was a lot happier than the other two. That’s always a good thing.
Annie was related to Christina in a sense, because Christina’s mom was childhood friends with her dad who sold umbrellas from China in the streets. Christina also named her.
“The Evolution of My Brother”-4.5 out of 5 stars: There we go. This short story about a girl named Jenny (I see what Zhang did there) and her hot-and-cold relationship with her brother was fascinating. It felt like an actual experience, but since it's fiction, I'm not going to take the "THIS MUST BE TRUE" road just because Zhang used her name as the protagonist's here. Watching the horrifying things the brother became into all because of Jenny's violent tendencies, much to her own regret and shame, was heartbreaking and addicting. I wanted to know more.
I liked that we also spent time with the family and how they had initially struggled (dumpster diving alongside Christina's parents after the ending of the first story) before becoming better off than the other families that have been shown so far. The mother really wanted to treat her son as the baby forever, but it was just as unhealthy as some of the stuff Jenny and her little brother did together.
The only thing that's preventing this from getting five stars is some of the stuff that happened, including eating burned hair, dumping ice cold water through fingers in the doorway, and swallowing pennies. But still, this was pretty much excellent and the best story in this collection so far.
I also loved how this ended in present tense. It was a nice change of pace.
"My Days and Nights of Terrors"-2.5 out of 5 stars: This was another mixed bag. Zhang tried to make this story about Mande growing up and getting closer to God, her growing anxiety, her parents caught in a very abusive relationship, and her escaping a relationship with bully Fanpin, a girl briefly mentioned in the second story with having one boob bigger than the other. To me, Fanpin very much fell into the psychotic and deranged lesbian stereotype that I don’t like, but their friendship was interesting and I cackled with glee at rereading all the parts Zhang went over at the reading (the falling-out part of the friendship, the “I’m not talking about cats” line). Even the abrupt ending was fantastic
Even with some excellent passages, some of the best and funniest and most poignant of this collection, this was another one of the weakest short stories.
“Why Were They Throwing Bricks?”-4 out of 5 stars: This story about a girl named Stacey having to deal with her possessive and compulsive liar grandmother every time she visited her family was haunting and kept me on my toes. The change in mentality of Stacey’s younger brother, Allen, in terms of his relationship with his grandmother as he grew older was fascinating. So was the grandmother herself, someone who later Stacey recognized as lonely and needing her fear to be quelled and herself to be validated. That was a powerful point.
This story was one of the shortest, but it’ll be sticking with me for a long time.
Good thing Christina was mentioned and complaining about her itching yet again, because we return with her family in the last story.
“You Fell into the River and I Saved You!”-4 out of 5 stars: This brought things to a surprisingly happy and peaceful close. Set up in seven parts known as reunions, Christina enters conversations where her parents, younger sister Emily, and her cousin Fang reminisce on family history, what happened to Christina in China (including falling into a river, where the title comes from), and even bringing everyone on the family tree together for an ultimate gathering. I liked Christina's wry voice and how it had evolved from the childish neediness of her first story, and the vignettes of people talking felt different but needed after some of the disturbing things that happened throughout this collection. Even Zhang's sharp humor felt more in touch here instead of being interpreted as tasteless. Overall, Sour Heart ended well.
A full-length review was posted on my school newspaper’s website on October 9th, 2017.
The review was selected by Best of SNO on November 29th, 2017 as an example of the best in high school journalism in the nation.
August 3, 2017
FAV QUOTES:
But what’s done is done, sourheart. Don’t you see? Everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a good reason and we have to be patient if we want to find out what that good reason is.
Didn't it bother him that he was teaching his students poetry when he was certain it wouldn't make a difference in how their lives turned out? Didn't it bother him to be so sure that it was futile to even try?
We whispered our love you’s and the next morning, I woke up thinking I was born sad.
And I wondered then how magic was distributed in the world and when and if my family would receive our fair share because I was no longer worried about how we were going to travel the seventy-something miles to get home without spending the last of our thirteen dollars, I just needed my mother to turn around and look at my father and laugh at how skinny his two legs looked, sticking out from under his protruding stomach that we once joked was a home for the world’s roundest watermelon—that was the kind of magic I was after.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was also willing to kill, maybe go to outer space to fetch a burning star and bring it to me to win my heart; anything was possible when a boy loved you that much.
I wanted to be special but sometimes I couldn’t tell if I was special or if I was special, and even though they were the same word, one singled you out for deep admiration and envy and the other guaranteed you were doomed and worthy only of pity.
It wasn't fair I had to be me for as long as I lived while other people got to be other people.
Why, why, why? my grandmother said. You waste my time with these whys. Go do something already so someone can ask you why you did it.
What allowed him to be at peace with the world when I was still so behind, waiting for the next several years to hurry up and finish so I could show everyone that I, too, would turn out this way, poised and so incredibly well-adjusted that I was a marvel to be discussed and openly pondered, perhaps even kept in a glass case rimmed with gold in a museum somewhere that charged exorbitantly for admission to see me, the special exhibit people traveled far and wide for.
It was my mother who tucked him in and told him that there exists a sort of love in the world that only survives as long as no one speaks of it, and that was the reason why he would never have to worry because my grandmother was never going to be the kind of mother who held her children in her arms and told them how smart and beautiful and talented they were. She was only ever going to scold them, make them feel diminutive, make them feel like they were never good enough, make them know this world wouldn’t be kind to them. She wasn’t going to let someone else be better than her at making her children feel pain or scare them more than she could, and to her, that was a form of protection.
I didn’t want to be saved, I wanted to be a member of the institution organizing the charity, the philanthropist dripping with generosity.
I knew in the very fuzzy part of what I paid attention to that my parents had suffered, too, they had struggled, too, and whatever happened to them in the year before I was brought to America was somehow related to their refusal to ever order beverages at restaurants because paying an extra dollar or two for something they could get in bulk for cheaper activated some kind of trauma inside them. It really did. But even more astounding was how they never stopped me or my brother from ordering those drinks.
It was only later, much, much, much later, that I understood and accepted that my parents paid for me to be free. All of it, I realized, had to be paid for by someone.
It turned out that this, too, was terrifying, all of it was terrifying. Being someone was terrifying.
“That makes no sense.”
“That’s because sense isn’t made, it’s learned.”
“Yo, you really need to get out of my room.”
Don't be sorry, just be better.
If everything is easy we’ll never learn. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s how we know we’re learning.
Our mothers weren’t really friends. They just had to be because this was a lonely life.
We told ourselves we were going to escape one day or another, although I never figured out if dying counted as escape.
Is it normal to wake up disappointed I’ve survived another day? Sometimes I think it would be better not to wake up at all, never to have known what it was like to have lived a life. Is it too late? Will I always know this life?
My mom smiled at me like I was the very girl she was meant to bring into this world, which meant I belonged to every single place I ever stepped foot on, but most of all, I was hers, and she was mine.
It was like one of those dreams where you think to yourself while the dream is happening that you must remember the dream when you wake. That if you remember this dream, it will change you, unlock secrets from your life that would otherwise be permanently closed. But when you wake up, the only thing you can remember is telling yourself to remember it. After trying to conjure up details and images and coming up blank, you think, Oh well, it was probably stupid anyway, and you go on with your life, and you learn nothing, and you don’t change at all.
As always, everyone kept asking me, What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is something bothering you? At night I flung my pillow against my mattress and prayed to my fake jade statue of the Guanyin goddess to give me a different face so that people would stop looking at my current one and asking me what was the matter.
It’s like how Americans have a knack for laziness. No one taught them how to slack off at their jobs. No one taught them to get away with doing the least amount of work possible, and yet they’re the best at it in the whole world. They’re born with it. It’s the same thing with paying attention to feng shui for us. It’s innate.
You can’t give young people that much freedom and not expect chaos.
But what’s done is done, sourheart. Don’t you see? Everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a good reason and we have to be patient if we want to find out what that good reason is.
Didn't it bother him that he was teaching his students poetry when he was certain it wouldn't make a difference in how their lives turned out? Didn't it bother him to be so sure that it was futile to even try?
We whispered our love you’s and the next morning, I woke up thinking I was born sad.
And I wondered then how magic was distributed in the world and when and if my family would receive our fair share because I was no longer worried about how we were going to travel the seventy-something miles to get home without spending the last of our thirteen dollars, I just needed my mother to turn around and look at my father and laugh at how skinny his two legs looked, sticking out from under his protruding stomach that we once joked was a home for the world’s roundest watermelon—that was the kind of magic I was after.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was also willing to kill, maybe go to outer space to fetch a burning star and bring it to me to win my heart; anything was possible when a boy loved you that much.
I wanted to be special but sometimes I couldn’t tell if I was special or if I was special, and even though they were the same word, one singled you out for deep admiration and envy and the other guaranteed you were doomed and worthy only of pity.
It wasn't fair I had to be me for as long as I lived while other people got to be other people.
Why, why, why? my grandmother said. You waste my time with these whys. Go do something already so someone can ask you why you did it.
What allowed him to be at peace with the world when I was still so behind, waiting for the next several years to hurry up and finish so I could show everyone that I, too, would turn out this way, poised and so incredibly well-adjusted that I was a marvel to be discussed and openly pondered, perhaps even kept in a glass case rimmed with gold in a museum somewhere that charged exorbitantly for admission to see me, the special exhibit people traveled far and wide for.
It was my mother who tucked him in and told him that there exists a sort of love in the world that only survives as long as no one speaks of it, and that was the reason why he would never have to worry because my grandmother was never going to be the kind of mother who held her children in her arms and told them how smart and beautiful and talented they were. She was only ever going to scold them, make them feel diminutive, make them feel like they were never good enough, make them know this world wouldn’t be kind to them. She wasn’t going to let someone else be better than her at making her children feel pain or scare them more than she could, and to her, that was a form of protection.
I didn’t want to be saved, I wanted to be a member of the institution organizing the charity, the philanthropist dripping with generosity.
I knew in the very fuzzy part of what I paid attention to that my parents had suffered, too, they had struggled, too, and whatever happened to them in the year before I was brought to America was somehow related to their refusal to ever order beverages at restaurants because paying an extra dollar or two for something they could get in bulk for cheaper activated some kind of trauma inside them. It really did. But even more astounding was how they never stopped me or my brother from ordering those drinks.
It was only later, much, much, much later, that I understood and accepted that my parents paid for me to be free. All of it, I realized, had to be paid for by someone.
It turned out that this, too, was terrifying, all of it was terrifying. Being someone was terrifying.
“That makes no sense.”
“That’s because sense isn’t made, it’s learned.”
“Yo, you really need to get out of my room.”
Don't be sorry, just be better.
If everything is easy we’ll never learn. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s how we know we’re learning.
Our mothers weren’t really friends. They just had to be because this was a lonely life.
We told ourselves we were going to escape one day or another, although I never figured out if dying counted as escape.
Is it normal to wake up disappointed I’ve survived another day? Sometimes I think it would be better not to wake up at all, never to have known what it was like to have lived a life. Is it too late? Will I always know this life?
My mom smiled at me like I was the very girl she was meant to bring into this world, which meant I belonged to every single place I ever stepped foot on, but most of all, I was hers, and she was mine.
It was like one of those dreams where you think to yourself while the dream is happening that you must remember the dream when you wake. That if you remember this dream, it will change you, unlock secrets from your life that would otherwise be permanently closed. But when you wake up, the only thing you can remember is telling yourself to remember it. After trying to conjure up details and images and coming up blank, you think, Oh well, it was probably stupid anyway, and you go on with your life, and you learn nothing, and you don’t change at all.
As always, everyone kept asking me, What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is something bothering you? At night I flung my pillow against my mattress and prayed to my fake jade statue of the Guanyin goddess to give me a different face so that people would stop looking at my current one and asking me what was the matter.
It’s like how Americans have a knack for laziness. No one taught them how to slack off at their jobs. No one taught them to get away with doing the least amount of work possible, and yet they’re the best at it in the whole world. They’re born with it. It’s the same thing with paying attention to feng shui for us. It’s innate.
You can’t give young people that much freedom and not expect chaos.
November 13, 2017
It feels apt there’s a luminous diagram of a heart on the cover of this book of short stories since it’s a collection which brims over with emotional tales of family life. Christina, the narrator of the opening and closing stories, has a penchant for sour fruit so her parents nickname her “sour heart.” But this name also reflects the attitudes of the different girls who are all the daughters of American-Chinese immigrants at the centre of these stories. Their tales explore innocence lost and feelings that turn rotten as these girls variously witness severe bullying from other children, undergo sexual experimentation, abuse within the family, various levels of racism, extreme poverty, homelessness and alienation. Although there are some truly shocking scenes and events within this collection, it doesn’t read like a series of misery tales because the forceful idiosyncratic voices that drive these stories have such strength and vibrancy. These are frank, densely-detailed accounts of young women sifting through the past. Their testaments collectively ponder the meaning of home and family in order to understand the dynamics of their own hearts.
Read my full review of Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang on LonesomeReader
September 2, 2017
This is an interesting collection of stories. I can't say that I enjoyed the book, but I guess I still learned something by reading it. The focus is on poor Asian immigrant families living in New York and the (often strange) sacrifices they have to make in order to survive. The writing is thoughtful, interesting, and sometimes insightful, but it's also dark, sprawling, and very stream of consciousness.
When I finished the book, the feeling I was left with was, "Huh, that sure was odd." Not everything felt realistic to me. More than a few moments, characters, and plot points seemed forced. Am I just out of touch with the harsh experiences of others? I don't know, but I couldn't help but feel like I was being manipulated and shocked by intense moments in order to make me FEEL something. It felt cheap. And, yes, uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point? In the end, it all just seemed very strange.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by publisher through Net Galley.
See more of my reviews at www.BugBugBooks.com.
When I finished the book, the feeling I was left with was, "Huh, that sure was odd." Not everything felt realistic to me. More than a few moments, characters, and plot points seemed forced. Am I just out of touch with the harsh experiences of others? I don't know, but I couldn't help but feel like I was being manipulated and shocked by intense moments in order to make me FEEL something. It felt cheap. And, yes, uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point? In the end, it all just seemed very strange.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by publisher through Net Galley.
See more of my reviews at www.BugBugBooks.com.
February 26, 2018
3.5 stars technically but Sour Heart is one of those collections that seems impossible to rate out of a five-star system. I didn't like this collection for 150 pages and then I REALLY liked two stories and then I felt very mediocre about the ending one.
And yet at the same time, I have not been able to stop thinking this collection, particularly the "bed" scene in the second story and the "barbed wire" scene in the fourth story. This collection reminded me of how gross and cruel children and families can be, and also how fucking uncomfortable it is to be 9 years old. I think this book is going to haunt me.
And yet at the same time, I have not been able to stop thinking this collection, particularly the "bed" scene in the second story and the "barbed wire" scene in the fourth story. This collection reminded me of how gross and cruel children and families can be, and also how fucking uncomfortable it is to be 9 years old. I think this book is going to haunt me.
January 7, 2018
The main bit of advice I'd give to anyone picking up Sour Heart is to read past the first two stories. Even if you want to stop, keep going.
Because after the frustrating stream of consciousness and run-on sentences that serve no real purpose in the first story, "We Love You Crispina," and what seems like vulgar attempts at shock in both that story and the one that follows - "The Empty the Empty the Empty" - the stories begin to focus on exploring Chinese immigrant family dynamics, and that is where it shines. (After all, the redemptive quality of "Crispina" is the family bond depicted, however garishly.)
In Sour Heart's latter stories, Zhang explores the way siblings, mothers, and grandmothers mingle need with love, and the way they manipulate to get it. The expectations for husbands and the way they meet or fail those expectations. The feeling of loneliness in a full, close-quartered home. One gets the sense that these recurring dynamics are very familiar to the author because of how often they reappear. And the stories that focus on these relationships are well worth your time. I particularly enjoyed "Our Mothers Before Them," about a daughter coming to understand her self-centered mother through the lens of her uncle visiting from Shanghai, and "The Evolution of My Brother," about that confusion of love and need in the sibling bond, and how it changes with age.
This collection sort of stumbles again with "My Days and Nights of Terror," which seems really meandering and unfocused. But this is Jenny Zhang's first book of stories. In the afterword she notes that she was ready to give up on it and I wasn't surprised at all to read that. Sour Heart is interesting because you can see some of the seams coming through in the cliches of modern writing (run-on sentences, over the top vulgarity, etc) and it's annoying, but you can also clearly see the promise Zhang has to put together something really powerful.
Also: I'm really glad I didn't notice that Lena Dunham's imprint published this book before reading it, because I might not have read it otherwise.
Because after the frustrating stream of consciousness and run-on sentences that serve no real purpose in the first story, "We Love You Crispina," and what seems like vulgar attempts at shock in both that story and the one that follows - "The Empty the Empty the Empty" - the stories begin to focus on exploring Chinese immigrant family dynamics, and that is where it shines. (After all, the redemptive quality of "Crispina" is the family bond depicted, however garishly.)
In Sour Heart's latter stories, Zhang explores the way siblings, mothers, and grandmothers mingle need with love, and the way they manipulate to get it. The expectations for husbands and the way they meet or fail those expectations. The feeling of loneliness in a full, close-quartered home. One gets the sense that these recurring dynamics are very familiar to the author because of how often they reappear. And the stories that focus on these relationships are well worth your time. I particularly enjoyed "Our Mothers Before Them," about a daughter coming to understand her self-centered mother through the lens of her uncle visiting from Shanghai, and "The Evolution of My Brother," about that confusion of love and need in the sibling bond, and how it changes with age.
This collection sort of stumbles again with "My Days and Nights of Terror," which seems really meandering and unfocused. But this is Jenny Zhang's first book of stories. In the afterword she notes that she was ready to give up on it and I wasn't surprised at all to read that. Sour Heart is interesting because you can see some of the seams coming through in the cliches of modern writing (run-on sentences, over the top vulgarity, etc) and it's annoying, but you can also clearly see the promise Zhang has to put together something really powerful.
Also: I'm really glad I didn't notice that Lena Dunham's imprint published this book before reading it, because I might not have read it otherwise.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,095 reviews