The Sorrows of Others

by Ada Zhang

Set in China and America, in the generations after the Cultural Revolution, The Sorrows of Others is a dazzling collection about people confronted with being outsiders—as immigrants, as revolutionaries, and even, often, within their own families.

In New York City, an art student finds an unexpected subject when she moves in with a grandmother from Xi’an, and boundaries are put into question. When a newlywed couple moves to Arizona, adapting to unfamiliar customs keeps their marriage from falling apart. A woman grapples with what it means to care for another, and the limits of that care, when her dying husband returns from Beijing years after abandoning her. And during a rainy summer in Texas, a visitor exposes the unspoken but unburiable history that binds two families together. Ada Zhang writes with startling honesty and love about lives young and old, in a stunning debut that explores what happens when we leave home and what happens when we stay, and the selves we meet and shed in the process of becoming.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, China, Asian American, Book Club

149 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 9, 2023

About the author

Ada Zhang is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She grew up in Austin, Texas, and now lives in New York City where she is an associate editor at Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. In 2023, she was selected as a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. The Sorrows of Others is her first book.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meng knew that one's interest in others is a door that is opened by one's own suffering.

This is an astonishingly mature collection of stories for a debut. Zhang writes in an austere style that allows for nuance and subtlety, nothing is too dramatic but there is depth here, balanced and never overwrought, no matter how emotive the subject.

All of the stories deal with personal relationships, usually in families, and the fractures and contingencies that ensue: friendships fail to outlive college, people settle for marriage, the past re-emerges to enable understanding. The settings are usually Chinese emigrants in the US though some stories are also set in China. The Revolution is in the background but is usually a submerged presence for an older generation, something rarely spoken off, however significant its effects.

These are not dramatic stories: there's no obvious beginning, middle and ending in the old formula, though there is a shape and a resolution albeit with a sense of life continuing.

Gorgeously melancholy, and with an elegantly crafted prose style, this is a collection to be savoured. I'm hugely excited to see what Zhang does next.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting themes related to family conflict and communication, Chinese culture within the context of the United States, and knowing one’s history. My favorite stories were “Julia,” which highlighted the nuances of friendships that shift over time and reveal things about ourselves, and “Knowing,” about the power and bittersweet sorrow of learning about your roots. On the whole, though, I found these stories a bit tame and uneventful for my taste – too subtle to make a lasting impression.

[Bkwmlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Short story collections can be a bit of a hit or miss for me. One reason is because I need stories to have some type of closure, as I don’t like the feeling of being left hanging — for me, a story needs to have a beginning, middle, and ending (which can be good, bad, or indifferent — doesn’t really matter to me as long as there’s closure). I also enjoy stories with characters that are well-developed and that I can root for. Unfortunately, most short story collections are written in a way where we essentially only get a small “slice of life” snippet, with the story oftentimes ending abruptly – the result is that the stories usually feel incomplete and I’m left yearning for more. In terms of the characters, it’s hard for me to be invested enough to root for them when I’m given little to no chance of getting to know them and watching them evolve.

With Ada Zhang’s debut collection of stories, The Sorrows of Others , this was exactly the type of situation I encountered. While I loved the themes that the stories explored – the impact of immigration and assimilation, constant struggle with identity and belonging, cultural dissonance between generations, parent/child relationships, complex family dynamics, etc. – I felt that the stories were way too short and therefore the themes weren’t covered as amply or deeply as I would’ve liked (as a point of reference, the entire collection was less than 150 pages, with the longest story being only 22 pages and the shortest story only 6 pages). Nearly every story felt incomplete to me, which made for a frustrating read, as I kept having to start over with each story trying to get back into the groove of things and get acquainted with the new characters.

Format-aside though, the writing here was excellent — Zhang did a great job weaving the cultural elements into the stories, which I definitely appreciated, especially since, being from the same culture, many of the experiences were familiar to me. Also, with some of the characters, the emotional undercurrents were definitely felt within their respective stories, it’s just that there wasn’t enough time to develop further due to the brevity of the stories.

Out of the 10 stories in this collection, the ones that resonated most with me were: The Sorrows of Others, Propriety, Silence, Sister Machinery, Knowing, and Compromise.

Overall, this was a good collection that I absolutely recommend for those who enjoy the short story format. Though I prefer novels, I appreciated the writing enough in this one that, if Zhang were to put out another short story collection, I would definitely read it.

Received ARC from A Public Space Books via Edelweiss .

[el · Rating 3 out of 5]

an uneventful series of short stories. doesn’t take many risks in terms of style, form, or content, though it’s definitely a cohesive collection offering slice-of-life-like glimpses of familial dysfunction, death, immigration, lineage/cultural inheritances, etc. i just feel very “meh” about it.

wasn’t impressed by the scope of the stories or the prose itself—this is one of the more lackluster submissions into the “iowa writer’s workshop” genre of sculpted domestic litfic. 2.9/5.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize US & Canada

The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang is published by A Public Space:

an independent nonprofit publisher of an eponymous award-winning literary, arts, and culture magazine, and A Public Space Books. Under the direction of founding editor Brigid Hughes since 2006, it has been our mission to seek out overlooked and unclassifiable work, and to publish writing from beyond established confines.

This is a debut collection of 10 stories, over 141 pages in total. The author is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and while these are beautifully crafted, they perhaps lack the innovation or distinctiveness I'd look for in a Republic of Consciousness featured collection.

The stories tend to split between two milieu, which sometimes effectively overlap. Stories of Millennials in and around New York, and stories of older couples in China (or having emigrated to the US from that country) often in arranged marriages.

One of the most effective of the former is Julia, narrated from the perspective of Esther, a 20-something working in publishing in NYC, although about to leave the city, priding herself on her metropolitan life, but, we gradually realise as the story progresses, very lonely particularly after a terminal argument with her best friend from back in Houston.

Fancy ice; overnight oats made with meticulous spoonfuls of nuts and berries, making her feel like she was some highly evolved squirrel. She’d come to appreciate these rituals, their patterning and repetition securing dependable results, adding predictability and assurance to her days. She could have her overnight oats anywhere, in Houston, where she was from, or in Nashville, where she was moving soon to oversee the ancillary paper products line for a small, vaguely Christian publisher. Not books, but book-adjacent, she’d told friends when they asked why she was leaving. Back to her Southern roots! she joked. Her friends with a sense of humor had all left in the years preceding. The ones who remained stared at her with long faces. When they asked what she would miss most about New York, she said the ubiquity of art, how it could be found on the streets and in museums, in the people and the ways they chose to live. She knew this was the answer they were seeking, the one that assuaged the precarious matter of continuing in New York, which was brought into question every time another person chose to leave. Art was what she loved about the city, what everyone loved, but it wasn’t what she would miss. She would miss the drugstores that punctuated every block, some of them converted from beautiful old buildings, giving them that stumbleupon quality she’d have to do without in a place like Nashville, where people drove cars and drugstores were treated more respectfully as destinations. After work, or before a night ended, the rows of products provided a sense of order, filled with latent possibility. The colors—condoms, toothpaste, Zyrtec, folic acid—were brighter, more abrasive under white overhead lights. She loved going in and discovering a need she hadn’t known was there. It felt good going home not empty-handed.

Any Good Wife is a good example of the latter - a couple who marry and move to New York, a marriage of convenience for each of them, and the story describes how, rather to the husband's distaste, his wife, Ailian, attempts to please him by cooking American cuisine from recipes she finds in Good Housekeeping:

In August, shortly after the start of the fall term, he came home to a dome on the table, the color and translucence of urine. Lettuce and small tomatoes make a wreath around the perimeter. Inside the dome, sliced radishes and shredded cabbage were suspended in space.”The food is trapped?” he’d asked, wondering if this was a joke or a game. “How do I get to it?” “You eat the whole thing,” Ailian said, looking pleased with herself. “It’s lemon-flavored. They call it Jell-O.”

3 stars, perhaps judged a little unfairly since done in the context of a prize set-up to support presses taking financial risks by supporting creatively challenging work.

[april ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

it’s always hard for me to rate short story collections, but on the whole this was a book that made me think, deeper and deeply, about the human condition. i found ada zhang’s writing to be perceptive and measured—she gets to the heart of relationships and interiority, in all their messy ways, which redeemed the more run-of-the-mill stories. (which also may just be because i feel like i’ve read too much chinese american lit at this point…but also i counted at least 4 mentions of cut fruit.) some of the other stories, though, i found wholly surprising. one of my few complaints is that the endings started to feel very formulaic, this retroactive zoom-out that puts the character in a future point where they can editorialize their past with more wisdom, understanding, and hindsight. still, this was an evocative collection that drew me in with the different ways it explores love, home, and loneliness; zhang writes with such tenderness about pasts that can’t be returned to. “knowing,” in particular, touched me.

(also this book really shows the power of a good epigraph. shoutout james baldwin. shoutout ada zhang for choosing a quote that captures the essence of an entire collection in one line.)

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

well crafted, wonderfully written, and delightfully detailed stories on the inner lives of people -- often chinese or chinese-american.

as a 朝鲜族 raised in texas with a modest familiarity of nyc, i found many of the characters and settings to be instantly recognizable. that said, what struck me -- first -- about this collection was how tightly yet intricately written the stories and characters were.

second, i believe stories in this collection add to the canon of how the cultural revolution brutalized and cleaved lives even before many of the children of that period underwent a second cleaving through immigration.

i most enjoyed Sorrows of Others, Sister Machinery, and Knowing.

[Monica Yao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed every basically every short story. The Cultural Revolution is a period of time where so many choices are not yours. You fall victim to those circumstances. Really enjoyed the stories that portrayed this.

A part of Chinese history that we try to forget, and ironically the time when the Chinese tried to forget their own history.

This is what let’s go let’s go let’s go tried to be lol

(Happy Chinese New Year!!!)

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEW: The young & old & lonely & accompanying also.

[Miki · Rating 2 out of 5]

*WARNING: I’m not going to be shy about my negative review of this collection.

I don’t know how these short stories were published and so I don’t ramble, here are some writing issues I encountered while reading these stories:

1. Some sentences lack logic;
2. There wasn’t always a comprehensive flow from one idea and/or sentence to the next;
3. The perspective was constantly shifting (for example from one character to another as first-person narration but without any clarity that the perspective had changed, or first person changed to third person omniscient without any reason);
4. Awkward phrases;
5. Punctuation errors;
6. Grammatical errors;
7. Not addressing problematic cultural behaviours seen as normal, such as invading an older adult’s privacy and publishing their private details online without their knowledge and consent. I’m Japanese and this exposure happens to younger people. At best, this exposure is disrespectful and at worst, it’s life-threatening. My issue with this content is there isn’t a nuanced conversation about these behaviours. Instead, what is elder abuse, is treated as normal and acceptable by all characters, even those who are being exposed; and
8. Ideas that don’t make sense or are used as truths, like this one: “Meng knew that one's interest in others is a door that is opened by one's own suffering." This sentence made me scratch my head and say, "What??". Does it mean that if person A is interested in another person, that their interest has only come about because of person A's suffering? Why? And what brings Meng to that conclusion/belief? Before Meng's thought, I was reading from Hui's perspective of Meng, so I was lost when suddenly the perspective shifted and there was no context for Meng's thought, which I feel I was meant to believe is something profound…but is it? Where's the anaphoric reference to that sentence? The door is a metaphor but based on the story's content, I don’t know why that metaphor is used and what the door represents. Reading that sentence pulled me out of the story and interrupted the reading experience, but it also made me feel like I didn’t understand English and didn’t understand Zhang’s writing.

Bad writing (text that isn’t well-written) isn’t subjective, and this collection contains a lot of bad writing: phrases like, “laughed unevenly” (I’ve never heard of uneven laughing. What does it sound like?); “…everyone’s doing it these days. The rich, the young.” (so glad that everyone is covered in those two categories); and this section of the text, “She had been there for only one night, and already he had to ask her, his new wife, where to find his lightweight coat, his materials for calligraphy, the small spoons he liked for his tea. ‘You sit,’ she said to him […] ‘I’ll get it.’ Get what? The lightweight coat, his materials for calligraphy, or the small spoons he liked for his tea? Subject-verb agreement is a basic grammar error, so why wasn’t it caught? And why am I finding overwritten sentences with comma errors in a book that’s longlisted for a literary prize? Some of the sentences, phrases, and diction in this collection read more like results from Google Translate than something you’d expect from a writer who has graduated from a writer’s workshop.

Overall, this collection was a disappointment. Zhang isn’t writing experimental fiction or subverting the form and/or function of the short story. Nor are Zhang’s stories adding anything new to the body of Asian North American literature, so I’m confused as to why this has been included in the RoC prize longlist. I had hoped (and assumed, silly me) that books included in longlists for book prizes had some literary merit. I feel like this whole collection falls short of deserving to be a contender for the RoC prize, and what bothers me is that somehow, with all of their errors and the poor writing quality, 7 of the 10 short stories have been published elsewhere. How? These stories read like first drafts. After reading this collection, I feel that Zhang’s publisher and editor have done her a great disservice. It’s like they’ve watched her walk out of the WC and seen that there’s toilet paper stuck to her shoe and said nothing, allowing her to walk into public for all to see.

[Ebook, borrowed from Hoopla via my library]

[Olivia Conway · Rating 4 out of 5]

sad and quiet. i like that many take place in texas. my favorite is sister machinery

[angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

not my usual type of read, but read for a bookclub! i give it a solid 3.5 stars.

the sorrows of others is a collection of short stories about chinese and chinese-american people following the aftermath of the cultural revolution.

it was heart-wrenching and emotional to witness immigrants assimilating into american culture while trying not to lose their roots.

i enjoyed the variety of POVs shared, and, as a TX native, especially resonated with the stories of first gen immigrants in TX.

[Allison Thornton · Rating 5 out of 5]

- She knew that one’s interest in others is a door that is opened by one’s own suffering.
- We get so few chances in life to be of real use to another person, to make their life more bearable, and meanwhile the chances to do harm are everywhere and often discreet; you don’t fully realize what you’ve done until it’s over.

When I spotted Ada Zhang's collection of stories on the New Releases shelf at my local library, I was initially drawn to the parallels in our paths. She was a Chinese-American who grew up in Texas and moved to the East Coast. But as I started reading, I was further drawn to her incredibly impressive ability to capture the tiniest of nuances in the range of human emotion, in particular on the spectrum of sadness. While in Missoula this past weekend, a friend commented on my "capacity for sadness," referring to my ability to shoulder the suffering of others. I feel like those same words could be used to describe Ada's work. Really excited to follow her journey as a writer and keep on reading.

[angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow my first book I’ve read w short stories and wowww I feel so melancholy. great stories, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. a lot of these stories made me reflect on my own childhood and my mom and grandparents. It really is so beautiful.

I really enjoyed reading:
One Day
Sister Machinery
Knowing
Compromise

[Scott Bruton · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is so rare that you can walk into a new random bookstore and pull a new random book from the shelf and begin reading to find it is so full of beauty and soul.

“I used to recall fantasizing about death and cringe, but not anymore. Now I think how lovely it is that even death was dressed in the glamour of my dreams.”

“He felt hopeful for Xiao An, which made him happy. As with any true happiness, grief was there along the edges. His daughter should be open to love, young love, but that required being open to pain.”

“Hui was fourteen at the time and had sensed that her mother’s scorn was imprecise and therefore less worthy of respect. She’d felt similarly this summer whenever her mother recited embarrassing cliches like, “Different flowers match different eyes,” that were meant to be comforting.”

“Since Hui was born Meng had been by herself, yet Hui had never thought to ask about it until now. Meng knew that one’s interest in others is a door that is opened by one’s own suffering.”

“She read in cafés alone and anonymous, with no reason except to offer the world a glimpse of her. Ten years later, she was leaving and decided to revisit all her old haunts, thinking she could pack up the years the way she had packed up her things: taking them out of context and rearranging them so they fit compactly together.”

“When you want someone’s pity, her mother used to say, that’s when you’ve lost all self-respect…
What was so bad about wanting to be pitied? Being adored - wasn’t that basically the same thing?”

He was right: multiplying and dividing fractions was easy. It was the simplification that messed me up. I ended up with large numbers on the top and bottoms, earning only half the points… “But my answers aren’t really wrong, are they?” When he didn’t answer, I met his eyes. “The fractions are the same.”
Yeye scooted his chair forward and placed his elbows on the table. He wove his long fingers together, making a hammock for his chin. “The same, yes,” he said, “but uglier.”

“My children think it was kindness that boarded on stupidity - one that resembles martyrdom - that allowed me to take care of their father, my husband, when really it had nothing to do with kindness at all. We get so few chances in life to be of realize to another person, to make their life more bearable, and meanwhile the chances to do harm are everywhere and often discreet; you don’t fully realize what you’ve done until it’s over.”

[Neko~chan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. This rating is more personal than anything. I felt this book had good execution (as expected from someone who graduated from Iowa) with middling ambition. Actually there were some stories that I grudgingly admitted were moving — like the last one — but I wasn’t wowed by the craft or the storytelling. It is definitely in part sour grapes on my part.

Also I found this rage note I wrote in my phone after work this week about this when I was halfway through the collection (I think the second half is better):

Topics are clichéd and when they try not to be, verge toward mimesis and no rigorous attempt to question and contend with this world we live in. In fact whenever it seems to approach some such aliveness it backs off. Prose is fine. Lacks an urgency beyond whatever ethnic credibility conveys. Fine, I guess she graduated from Iowa. Asian women need to STOP writing lukewarm takes about white men, seriously. Maybe these stories constantly win because some WMAF is on the judging committee. I guess I am harder on Asian Americans because I am one, but I believe we can do better. I do believe there is a certain type of writing that gets generated from that workshop. National Book Award 5 under 35 is a hard award because it necessarily awards writers who are not fully formed. I do not believe it will become a classic.

[jojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really good stories that ended feeling really incomplete
Some kinda mid stories bc it lacked proper depth

[Diana Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

insightful, sad, and relatable collection of short stories. I felt like the author could be a good friend 💗

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really solid, meditative short story collection

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 maybe ?? a bit of a mixed bag and none of them ended in a satisfying way but Chinese Texans always make me feel seeen

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of short stories exploring complicated relationships: between parents and children; between friends and lovers; and between oneself and one’s own cultural identity. I NEED to read more from Zhang!

[Novi · Rating 4 out of 5]

man hitting this year hard with incredible new chinese authors who are adding dynamic and nuanced narratives of the lives of Asians figuring out how to live in the US.

honestly so shocked at how incredible this book was. i was compelled to jot down so many quotes as so many of the stories read poetically. many themes surrounding the stories sparked interesting conversations between ruby and i. stories explore complicated relationships with parents, siblings, grandparents, lovers. some stories were so devastatingly sad and others very tender.

the story about the grandmother and her grandchild really hit me hard especially how right now it is around the 2nd anniversary of my grandfather's passing. I like how the story shared the distinct kind of freedom a grandparent is able to give their grandchild as they hold power over the grandchild's parent. my grandfather helped raise me and defended me when i wanted to be or act in ways my mom did not expect me or want me to be - parenting his child as she parented me. i saw elements of this dynamic in the story as well as traits of my grandfather in the grandmother of the story.

i saw that this writer is fairly young (under 35) so i am excited to see the stories this writer will produce as her writing style becomes more refined and she has a stronger grasp on language with time (not that she doesn't already have that)!

fav stories:
- One Day
- Sister Machinery
- Knowing

[Julian Ordaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

bonus points of debut novel & Austin > NYC author

- Wisdom is for people like me, who are old, who are trying to make up in utility what we’ve lost in time pg. 5
- It was around then that I began to want to leave Flushing, which meant that I was living there for the first time pg. 18
- He still loved her for who she was when she died, someone separate from him and therefore incomprehensible pg. 31
- My father loved my mother, which made it only a little sad that he might never understand her pg. 44
- “I come home every holiday, don’t I?” “What do you think that is?” A way of making your absence pronounced, Meng thought. pg. 60
- The flesh around his mouth and eyes like wax that had dipped and hardened again pg. 130

[Amy van Hattem · Rating 5 out of 5]

“He couldn't understand what it was like to feel this deeply for strangers, but he supposed this was a way to stay afloat on top of loneliness, buoyed by the sorrows of others.”

“Everyone should do something like that when they're young, when the consequences for things are small.”

“We get so few chances in life to be of real use to another person, to make their life more bearable, and meanwhile the chances to do harm are everywhere and often discreet; you don't fully realize what you've done until it's over.”

“Part of loving someone is accepting what you don't know, and what you do know.”

"Every story relied on one preceding it, which made a story told in isolation a lie and one told in its entirety basically impossible"

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think one of the first short story collections I've read. Not sure if I don't particularly like the format, or just Zhang's approach.

The stories felt a bit... muddy. Most of the stories play around in time, jumping back and forth, often by years or even decades. That's a bit of a unifying theme of the book, how relationships persist over time, even through distance and/or time.

I do think Zhang did an admirable job of developing round characters in the stories, but even still, I feel like I often struggled to get too invested.

[sanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

found this in a little free library by the botanic gardens. i was a little skeptical going in because the title is kinda… u know… 😐

but i truly thought it was great. read these very carefully one per day or one every couple of days and really let them marinate. loved the characters all searching for themselves in others and sometimes finding what they’re looking for and sometimes not. my fav story in the collection was “julia”. forming a friendship w someone based on both being snarky haters is sooooooo real and i’ve also wondered a lot about friendships i’ve had like that if they’re really built to last and if we truly are able to allow one another to know each other hmmmm………

[Isabella 淑娇 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe even a 4.5. These stories are filled with a mournful nostalgia for times that no longer exist. They explore the limits of forgiveness and the sometimes unspoken sacrifices it takes to hold a family together in a foreign and often inhospitable country — to the point where the sorrows of others become yours too.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sorrows of others - Ada Zhang
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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I have always a soft spot for immigrant stories, being one myself. This book is a collection of Asian American immigrant stories, their sorrows, their heartaches for every immigrant has one. Some stories like “Knowing” broke my heart more than another. A little kid who wasn’t aware of her parents’ heartaches, only learning of it later in adulthood. Or a middle class Asian Amergirl who grew up in comfort who interviewed her elderly landlord for her stories for the art project.
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This book is melancholic, and I feel every single strand of sadness that is flowing out of it. History is cruel, but it’s crueler for ignoring it
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#thesorrowsofothers #adazhang #booksbooksbooks #currentlyreading #2025reads #2025readingchallenge

[Lily Poppen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to five stars but I really love how Zhang writes characters in such a condensed amount of time, especially the dynamics that can be understood in only sparse lines of dialogue between characters. The stories “Silence” and “Knowing” were really stand-outs.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

No notes. One of the best collections I’ve ever read.