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Summary and Reviews of Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen

Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen

Thank You, Mr. Nixon

Stories

by Gish Jen
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 1, 2022, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Nov 2022, 256 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

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"; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their "number-one daughter" in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on "no politics, just make money," finds she must reassess her mother's philosophy.

With their profound compassion and equally profound humor, these eleven linked stories trace the intimate ways in which humans make and are made by history, capturing an extraordinary era in an extraordinary way. Delightful, provocative, and powerful, Thank You, Mr. Nixon furnishes yet more proof of Gish Jen's eminent place among American storytellers.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

There is a subtle and warm but deceptively powerful humor that blooms throughout Jen's book, a gathering of often-linked stories exploring China's relationship with the rest of the world and the consequences of this relationship to individual people. Her characters are not quite the logical outcome of their sociopolitical circumstances, but rather people who have fallen into particular, sometimes peculiar, crevices of existence, and they are exquisitely written...continued

Full Review (760 words)

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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).

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Beyond the Book



The Work of Mark Rothko

No 14 by Mark Rothko featuring large orange rectangle above blue rectangleThe story "Rothko, Rothko" in Gish Jen's collection Thank You, Mr. Nixon features an art forger who is dedicated to mimicking the work of the abstract painter Mark Rothko. Known for his depictions of intensely colored rectangular figures, Rothko is considered one of the most notable artists of the 20th century.

An American of Latvian Jewish descent, Rothko was born in the then-Russian city of Dvinsk (now Latvia's Daugavpils) in 1903. After his family moved to the United States in 1913, he attended grade school and high school in Portland, Oregon before going on to Yale University in 1921. He dropped out after two years and wandered the country, then moved to New York City in 1925, beginning his painting career as a student of the Russian...

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Read-Alikes

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