Synopses & Reviews
For author Gish Jen, the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, books were once an Outsiders' Guide to the Universe. But they were something more, too. Through her eclectic childhood reading, Jen stumbled onto a cultural phenomenon that would fuel her writing for decades to come: the profound difference in self-narration that underlies the gap often perceived between East and West.
Drawing on a rich array of sources, from paintings to behavioral studies to her father's striking account of his childhood in China, this accessible book not only illuminates Jen's own development and celebrated work but also explores the aesthetic and psychic roots of the independent and interdependent self-each mode of selfhood yielding a distinct way of observing, remembering, and narrating the world. The novel, Jen writes, is fundamentally a Western form that values originality, authenticity, and the truth of individual experience. By contrast, Eastern narrative emphasizes morality, cultural continuity, the everyday, the recurrent. In its progress from a moving evocation of one writer's life to a convincing delineation of the forces that have shaped our experience for millennia, Tiger Writing radically shifts the way we understand ourselves and our art-making.
Review
In a magnificent feat of integration, Tiger Writing honors the becoming of the Chinese American writer. I am proud, proud, proud to share ancestors-and the novel and the world-with Gish Jen. Oh, and the wonderful faith-that the novel can be learned! Junot D & iacute;az, author of < i=""> The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao <>
Review
Gish Jen is the Great American Novelist we're always hearing about, and in Tiger Writing she delivers a profound meditation on the divergent roles that storytelling, artmaking, and selfhood take on across the East-West divide. Penetrating, inspired, and, yes, indispensable. Publishers Weekly
Review
Blending family memoir, cultural criticism, and reflections on her own life as a writer, Gish Jen makes a compelling case for the novel as a meeting-ground of typically American themes of independence with classically Asian ideals of interdependence. Tiger Writing is a rare case of a book on writing that itself is a joy to read. Maxine Hong Kingston, author of < i=""> To Be the Poet <>
Review
How to balance the competing claims of social order and self-determination? It's a question that all novelists must grapple with, and Jen, drawing on extensive research in the social sciences as well as her own vividly-rendered biography, gives us an entirely new answer. The result is a strikingly original--and compellingly personal--account of the novel as a genre. David Damrosch, author of < i=""> What Is World Literature? <>
Review
Tiger Writing is both precise and intimate, a terrific contribution to our understanding of the artist's lot in the East and in the West. Gary Shteyngart, Author Of < i=""> super Sad True Love Story <>
Review
[A] thoughtful--and often witty--volume...Jen raises important questions about how we fashion our own stories and how cultural differences influence that process. Mark Manivong - Library Journal
Review
These pieces are as entertaining as they are insightful. Jen's readers will undoubtedly love them, and those new to her work should consider them as well. The Hindu
Review
Tiger Writing is a remarkable achievement on account of its sobriety and unique perception of difference between what Gish Jen considers as the West and Asian narratives...Her sensitivity to her own roots and the transparency with which she focuses on these textures is what makes Tiger Writing remarkably interesting...Gish Jen's translucency as a novelist with an astute critical sense is that which leads us through the pages of this extremely interesting narrative. Tiger Writing is thus at once a text of critical exploration and a manifesto. Murali Sivaramakrishnan
Synopsis
Drawing on a rich array of sources, including her father's striking account of his childhood in China, Tiger Writing not only illuminates Gish Jen's work but explores the aesthetic and psychic roots of the independent and interdependent self--each mode of selfhood yielding a distinct way of observing, remembering, and narrating the world.
Synopsis
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, 2013
About the Author
Gish Jen is a writer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of four novels, including Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land. Her most recent novel is World and Town.