BAD GIRL is a genre-bending novel spanning continents, generations, and cultures, following a rebellious mother and a rebellious daughter jousting across decades of curiosity and ambition, elation and disappointment, intimacy and misunderstanding.

Gish’s mother –Loo Shu-hsin–is born in 1925 to a wealthy Shanghai family whose girls are expected to restrain themselves.  Her beloved nursemaid is closer to her than her real mother, yet she is summarily fired even as Shu-hsin is constantly reprimanded:  “Bad bad girl!  You don’t know how to talk!”  Sent to a modern Catholic school by her progressive father, she receives not only an English name–Agnes–but a first-rate education.  To his delight, she excels.  But even then he can only sigh, “Too bad.  If you were a boy, you could accomplish a lot.”  Agnes finds solace in books and, in 1947, announces her intention to pursue a PhD in America.  As the Communist revolution looks, she sets sail–never to return. 

In New York, she marries and successfully establishes a new American life. By the time Gish is born, though, the plight of her family in China is haunting her; her marriage is foundering; and Agnes, confronted with a strong-willed, outspoken daughter distinctly reminiscent of herself, is repeating the refrain, “Bad bad girl!  You don’t know how to talk!” as she recapitulates the harshness of her own upbringing. Spanning continents, generations, and cultures, Bad Bad Girl is a novel only Gish Jen could have written—an engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.