-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Gish Jen
Book Reviewed by:The award-winning author of The Resisters returns with an engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.
My mother had died, but still I heard her voice...
Gish's mother—Loo Shu-hsin—is born in 1925 to a wealthy Shanghai family where girls are expected to behave and be quiet. Every act of disobedience prompts the same reprimand: "Bad bad girl! You don't know how to talk!" She gets sent to Catholic school, where she is baptized, re-named for St. Agnes, and, unusually for a girl, given an internationally minded education. Still, her father would say, "Too bad. If you were a boy, you could accomplish a lot." Aggie finds solace in books, reading every night with a flashlight and an English-Chinese dictionary, before announcing her intention to pursue a Ph.D. in America. It is 1947, and with the forces of Communist revolution on the horizon, she leaves—never to return.
Lonely and adrift in Manhattan, Aggie begins dating Chao-Pei, an engineering student also from Shanghai. While news of their country and their families grows increasingly dire, they set out to make a new life together: marriage, a number one son, a small house in the suburbs. By the time Gish is born, her parents' marriage is unraveling, and her mother, struggling to understand her strong-willed American daughter, is repeating the refrain that punctuated her own childhood: "Bad bad girl! You don't know how to talk!"
Bad Bad Girl is a novel about a mother and a daughter forced to reckon with each other across decades of curiosity and ambition, elation and disappointment, intense intimacy and misunderstanding. Spanning continents and generations, this is a rich, heartbreaking portrait of two fierce women locked in a complicated lifelong embrace.
BookBrowsers Ask Eve J. Chung, author of Daughters of Shandong
Eve_C: But we did both still deal with male favoritism in different ways, especially among extended family. My mom said that growing up, she did not receive toys from her grandfather because the rule was that only boy children got toys. Have you read Gish Jen's Bad Bad Girl ? Some of what you're ...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/30/2025)
...cters in rural Ireland that describe the turmoil and strength of a community. Thank you Vicki and Evonne it was a heartwarming read. Now I am reading Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen. The book centers on the relationship between a mother and daughter with the conflicts of family and culture. I'm 70% into the novel so I hope to fin...
-Lynne_G
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/09/2025)
In hard copy I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5101/bad-bad-girl Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen. It received four or five starred reviews (Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, etc.) and it's definitely worth the hype. Any woman who's had a difficu...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10-02-2025)
...but definitely found it worth my time. I'm now reading https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/22071/bad-bad-girl Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen for review. Loving it, and I think this group would really enjoy it as well. In audiobook format, I finished up https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/in...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (09-25-2025)
...since he'll be visiting us in a few weeks, followed by https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/22071/bad-bad-girl Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen for review. In audiobook format, I finally finished Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, the second (and final) book in her Earthseed series. In...
-kim.kovacs
Jen was consequently compelled to fictionalize much of her mother's life, and it's this story, inferred from the few facts Jen could glean, that makes up the first half of the book. It's fascinating reading: Jen constructs Agnes' world vividly, beginning with the milieu of wealthy Shanghai residents of Agnes' childhood, through her emigration to the United States, her marriage to fellow Chinese immigrant Jen Chao-pe, and the births of their children... In the second half of the book, Jen moves to her own life: her childhood, marriage, children, the deaths of her parents, and, across the years, her journey to become a writer...continued
Full Review
(833 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
The first part of Gish Jen's book Bad Bad Girl narrates her mother Agnes's life in China. Although Agnes was treated cruelly by her mother (Jen's grandmother), Agnes's father doted on her and encouraged her intellect. He had her reciting poetry almost as soon as she could talk, their joint favorite being An Ode to the Goose by Luo Binwang.
The poem is one of the most famous works in China and is memorized by every schoolchild. One English translation is:
Goose, goose, goose,
You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.
Your white feathers float on the emerald water,
Your red feet push the clear waves.
An Ode to the Goose is revered for its carefree spirit and for how its few simple words create such a vivid picture of the...
If you liked Bad Bad Girl, try these:
by Eve J. Chung
Published 2025
A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story.
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
by Zhuqing Li
Published 2023
Sisters separated by war forge new identities as they are forced to choose between family, nation, and their own independence.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
by Amy Chua
Published 2011
An awe-inspiring, often hilarious, and unerringly honest story of one mother's exercise in extreme parenting, revealing the rewards - and the costs - of raising her children the Chinese way.
Information is the currency of democracy
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
