Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen

 

This is a story of the relationship between the author and her mother.  It is a memoir and a biography and a history of China as the old ways crumbled and the Communists took over.  It is an expose, a love letter and an attempt by the author to make sense of her life and that of her mother.

Jen's mother was born to a wealthy family with many servants and a huge mansion.  She was raised until she was six or seven by a nanny who was the person who provided the love and comfort every child needs.  Then the woman was abruptly sent away and Jen was expected to become a dutiful Chinese daughter.  Her mother was cold to her, openly favoring her brother.  For Jen, her most often phrase was 'Bad bad girl, you don't know how to talk!'.

But Jen's mother was not willing to live the life she was expected to.  She always excelled in school and managed to get a scholarship to go to the United States to university.  She was to live with friends of her parents and her father gave her some money to go on.  That was the last money she was to see from her parents and pretty much the last time she would speak with her mother.  Her mother didn't come to the phone when Jen called home and rarely wrote.  When the Communists took over, her family lost most of their money and their property, moving from the large house they inhabited to some rooms in another house shared with other families.  Jen's mother, who had married another Chinese student in America,  rarely replied to their pleas for help and money and even when her mother broke down and wrote, she didn't change her ways.

In the meantime Gish Jen was born.  She was strong willed like her mother and soon her mother was repeating the words she had been raised on, 'Bad Bad Girl'.  But it is evident how much the author loved and respected her parents.  The telling of their last days and the little personal services that she would provide for each of them, spoiling them as best she could, were poignant.  I can only hope that my children will do the same for me when my time comes.

Gish Jen has written several novels and books that explore the Chinese culture, it's modern history and its relationship with the United States.  Her short fiction has been widely used in magazines and anthologies.  In this book, she creates a look inside Chinese families and in particular, the mother-daughter relationship.  Most of what she writes about this relationship portrays that relationship in many cultures as our parents are our world at first and the first love relationships we will have.  Along the way, we learn history, stories about Gish Jen's own life, and the questions about how we ourselves will parent.  This book is recommended for literary fiction and memoir readers.