Sour Heart Book Launch : An Evening with Jenny Zhang and Lena Dunham - Housing Works, August 1, 2017

On August 1st, Lena Dunham introduced Jenny Zhang at Housing Works in New York City for a book talk about her latest work Sour Heart.  


In contrast to the Joy Luck Club and other well known asian american writers before Amy Tan that have published books now deemed 'classics' in your local public library, Sour Heart presents a fresh new voice depicting the struggles of the modern immigrant experience in America. It's relatable in a way that Joy Luck Club isn't for young asian americans. The modern immigrant experience is about assimilation to American culture but and making your mark to stand out in your new homeland with originality.  Jenny Zhang tells the more interesting stories of adapting to a new culture that often doesn't get told in mainstream media.  Sour Heart highlights the uncanny things of everyday life we oftentimes take for granted.

 

Jenny's stories cut across an immigrant's orientation of space and time, moving from the Chinese immigrant enclaves of Flushing, Queens, to her cultural roots in Shanghai, China, and the the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. 

A daughter of Chinese immigrants herself, Jenny Zhang narrates stories of dumpster diving for food, scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck, and other darkly humorous survival, coming of age, and assimilation tales.

If you missed this excellent book talk you can catch a video clip below! Or get the book here and savor it over a nice cup of Chinese jasmine green tea (our preference is the jasmine green by French tea blender Palais de The).