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Typical American (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) by Gish Jen
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Typical American by Gish Jen
(Contemporary Fiction, Plume)

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Typical American by Gish Jen. Houghton Mifflin,1991
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About Gish Jen

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Gish Jen is the author of the novels Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife and Who's Irish, a book of stories. Her honors include the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Published January 1, 1991 by Houghton Mifflin. 296 pages
Genres: Literature & Fiction, History. Fiction
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Kirkus Reviews

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""You listen but you don't hear,"" Lai Fu's tutor had screamed, and the grown-up child, now named ""Ralph"" in America, remembers wishing ""to destroy his father's world."" But now, the family gone forever, Ralph muses that ""he wasn't supposed to succeed."" At first Ralph, on a scholarship to st...

Mar 22 1991 | Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...

Publishers Weekly

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A wry but compassionate voice and distinctive sensibility animate this accomplished first novel, a darkly humorous account of Chinese immigrants encountering America. Lai Fu Chang comes to the U.S in

Mar 04 1991 | Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...

Publishers Weekly

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Vainglorious and ineffectual, puffed up with domineering pride, Ralph attempts to rule the roost, but it is his self-effacing but resourceful wife and self-sacrificing sister who bring the family through the bad times that befall them after feckless Ralph becomes involved with a millionaire conma...

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Entertainment Weekly

Sober, virginal Theresa is drawn into an affair with Old Chao, a married Chinese colleague of Ralph's.

Mar 29 1991 | Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...

Suite 101

Rhoda and Samuel each have problems but together they could be successful..

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People

Jen's novel is about Yifeng Chang, a scholar's son who leaves Maoist China to study in the U.S. Nicknamed Ralph, Chang weds a Chinese woman who has already fallen for American ways.

Apr 29 1991 | Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...

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