Synopsis
About Gish Jen
See more books from this Author""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...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...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...
| Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...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...Rhoda and Samuel each have problems but together they could be successful..
| Read Full Review of Typical American (Contemporar...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...An aggregated and normalized score based on 17 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes