In her powerful new work, acclaimed American author Gish Jen turns her literary gaze inward, using fiction to dissect the complex and painful relationship she shared with her own mother. The novel, titled 'Bad Bad Girl', serves as both a deeply personal excavation and a sweeping historical narrative.
A Fictionalised Journey into a Mother's Past
The book centres on Loo Shu-hsin, a character born into privilege in Shanghai in 1924. While her father is a banker in the British-run International Settlement, Loo's childhood is dominated by her mother's relentless criticism and belittlement. Harsh rebukes like "Bad bad girl!" and warnings that "no one will ever marry you" are a constant refrain. Her sole comfort comes from a nursemaid named Nai-ma, whose sudden and unexplained disappearance leaves a lasting psychic wound.
This protagonist, however, is not merely another of Jen's insightful Chinese American immigrant portraits. Loo Shu-hsin is a fictionalised version of Jen's own mother. The novel began as a memoir but evolved as Jen used fiction to fill the gaps in her understanding of her reticent parent's life. "All my life," Jen writes, "I have wanted to know how our relationship went wrong."
The Weight of History on a Family
Bad Bad Girl powerfully demonstrates how global events warp individual destinies. Loo's life is violently interrupted by the Japanese invasion and occupation of Shanghai in 1937, a period of firebombing and terror. Later, after emigrating to the United States to pursue a PhD, the upheavals in China continue to reach her through letters and conversations.
The narrative traces the Communist Party's rise, the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan, agrarian reform, and the devastating Great Famine of 1959-1961. Family members are sent to labour camps, and Loo never sees her parents again. This historical trauma provides crucial context for the emotional landscape Jen explores.
A Cycle of Hurt and a Search for Healing
The novel's second half shifts to Jen's own memories of a childhood marked by her mother's "selective cruelty" in suburban Yonkers and Scarsdale. Jen recounts receiving the smallest bedroom, the burnt ends of meals, and repeated physical punishment. This upbringing mirrors her mother's own, creating a heartbreaking cycle where the same cutting phrases—"Bad bad girl!"—are passed down.
Jen interweaves the story with imagined conversations with her mother, who died in 2020. These frank discussions, which never happened in life, form a wish-fulfilling dialogue that comments on the narrative itself. "I want not to have a mother-shaped hole in my heart," Jen confesses in one such exchange.
The result is a piercing blend of fiction and nonfiction that refuses to cast anyone as a simple villain. Instead, it offers an empathetic, expansive look at how personal and historical violence intertwine, and how the yearning for parental understanding can persist long after they are gone. 'Bad Bad Girl' is published by Granta (£18.99).
