Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories

The acclaimed, award-winning author of The Resisters takes measure of the fifty years since the opening of China and its unexpected effects on the lives of ordinary people. It is a unique book that only Jen could write--a story collection accruing the power of a novel as it proceeds--a work that Cynthia Ozick has called "an art beyond art. It is life itself."

Beginning with a cheery letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to "poor Mr. Nixon" in hell, Gish Jen embarks on a fictional journey through U.S.-China relations, capturing the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change.

Opal Chen reunites with her Chinese sisters after forty years; newly cosmopolitan Lulu Koo wonders why Americans "like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes"; and Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their "number-one daughter" in New York.

With their profound compassion and equally profound humor, these stories trace the intimate ways in which humans make and are made by history. Delightful, provocative, and powerful, Thank You, Mr. Nixon captures an extraordinary era in an extraordinary way. A book only Gish Jen could write, it furnishes yet more proof of her eminent place among American storytellers.

Author: Gish Jen
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 11/01/2022
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.26w x 0.81d
ISBN13: 9780593314098
ISBN10: 0593314093
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Short Stories (single author)
- Fiction | Asian American
- Fiction | Literary

About the Author
GISH JEN is the author of one previous book of stories, five novels, and two works of nonfiction. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright Foundation, as well as the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century; she has also delivered the William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in American Studies at Harvard University. She and her husband split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Vermont.