story: “Our Mothers Before Them”
author: Jenny Zhang, who I stumbled upon at Shakespeare & Company last summer in Paris
year: 2017
where: Abu Dhabi
note: From the NYer, “Sour Heart is a feminist bildungsroman—the narrators act upon their world just as much as the world acts upon them—and it depicts, from start to finish, a collective coming of age.”
&: This is definitely a long short story, a very good one.
a line: “My mother got up and drew the microphone to her lips and spoke into it, breathy and slow. ‘YES. It. Was. A. Good. Thing. In. The. End.”
theme(s): Mothers and daughters; immigration; siblings; manic-depression
samantha Neugebauer 