![]() On one hand, Zhang’s stories counter the model minority stereotype through nuanced youth perspectives, but they also offer some context as to why the stereotype exists about Chinese Americans. There is an entrenched cultural stereotype that Asians are the model minority, but when examined with any degree of scrutiny the “Asian” monolith ceases to exist. Told from candid adolescent perspectives, the stories show how family members cause each other bitter pain, but that a greater tenderness exists between them that is based in the knowledge of the great sacrifices they have made and continue to make to lift each other up. ![]() Their families are poor in wealth but not in their love and dedication to each other. The same room threads itself through each of the seven stories, representing a halfway point that the families in transit passed through coming from China and the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, on their way to building new lives in America.Īll of Zhang’s narrators are Chinese American girls going through bifurcated childhoods, born in China but uprooted to the US by elementary school, in time for the most formative years of youth. This squalid and cramped space is shown to us in the opening pages of Sour Heart, Jenny Zhang’s debut collection of fiction. ![]() Washington Heights, NYC, the late 1980s: a room shared by multiple Chinese immigrant families where ten people sleep, mattresses covering the entire floor. ![]()
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