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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Feb 2022, 272 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2022, 256 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Elisabeth Cook
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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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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
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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
Jean Kwok, author of Girl in Translation
An absolute delight. Jen's luminous, deeply moving stories are filled with insight and humor, heartbreak and love. Her elegant prose creates characters who not only endear themselves to us but also illuminate our common humanity. Gorgeous. Lisa See, author of The Island of Sea Women
I loved Thank You, Mr. Nixon so much that I find myself wishing for two things. One, that I could have the space in a review to praise it to the skies and back again. Two, that I could meet Gish Jen and talk to her into the wee hours about how she accomplished such a fantastic work. I've read a lot of novels that take place in China or are about the Chinese American experience. Never before have I seen the China of the last fifty years captured so well, in such an intricately and cleverly constructed plot, or with such understanding and deep wit, while the chapters that take place in the U.S. are current, spot on, and sometimes critical—all written with great love as the foundation. I'm overflowing with admiration.
The 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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