Jen, Lillian 1956(?)-

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JEN, Lillian 1956(?)-

(Gish Jen)

PERSONAL: Born c. 1956; married David O'Connor; children: Luke, Paloma (daughter). Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1977; attended Stanford University, 1979-80; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1983.

ADDRESSES: Home—Cambridge, MA. Agent—Maxine Groffsky, Maxine Groffsky Literary Agency, 2 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10011.

CAREER: Writer. Tufts University, lecturer in fiction writing, 1986; University of Massachusetts, visiting writer, 1990-91; Radcliffe writer-in-residence, Institute's fellowship program; advanced creative writing seminar in women's studies, Harvard, 2001.

MEMBER: Massachusetts Artists Foundation (fellow, 1988), Radcliffe Bunting Institute and James A. Michener Foundation/Corpernicus Society (fellow, 1986).

AWARDS, HONORS: Henfield Foundation/Transatlantic Review Award, 1983; resident, MacDowell Colony, 1985 and 1987; fellow, National Endowment for the Arts, 1988; prize from Katherine Anne Porter Contest, Nimrod, 1987; Bunting Institute fellowship, 1987; prize from Boston MBTA UrbanArts Project, 1988; grants from James Michener/Copernicus Society and the Massachusetts Artist's Foundation; stories published in Best American Short Stories of the Century, 1988, 1995; Lannan Foundation Literary Award, 1999; American Academy of Arts and Sciences Strauss Living Award, 2002-2007.

WRITINGS:

under name gish jen

Typical American (novel), Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1991.

Mona in the Promised Land (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1996.

Who's Irish? (short stories), Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

The Love Wife, Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

Work represented in anthologies, including Best American Short Stories of 1988, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1988; New Worlds of Literature, Norton (New York, NY), 1989; and Home to Stay: Asian American Women's Fiction, Greenfield Review Press (Greenfield Center, NY), 1990. Contributor to periodicals, including New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Yale Review, Fiction International, and Iowa Review.

ADAPTATIONS: The story "The Water Faucet Vision" has been adapted for audio by OtherWorld Media, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS: Lillian Jen, who writes under the name Gish Jen, is a writer of lively fiction filled with keenly observed moments and gestures. Though she dislikes being categorized as an "Asian-American writer," her novels and stories do provide an insightful look into what it means to be Asian in contemporary America, but it is a very different look from that offered by her predecessors Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, whose prototypes she had to break through to make a witty and sardonic entrance of her own. Greg Changnon of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution considered, "Amy Tan, in her three novels of the Chinese-American experience, gently nudged readers toward ethnic awareness, offering a taste test of her culture's exotic fables. But Jen, with her dazzling prose and wicked point of view, shoves readers past sightseeing and into the territory of self-discovery." To Calvin Liu of AsianWeek Jen "maintains that her intention is never to reflect any certain ethnic experience, though she admits that her heritage and her writing are unconsciously inseparable."

Her first novel, Typical American, "examines the disorienting freedom and often illusory promises of the New World" through the story of Ralph and Helen Chang, according to Wendy Smith in Publishers Weekly. As the Changs struggle with poverty, an insensitive landlord, and the machinations of a slick huckster, Jen produces a "tragic-comic" tale, as she told Ron Hogan in a Beatrice interview. Their story, which People reviewer Sara Nelson called "wise but sweet, hopeful yet knowing," ends with their financial success through a fast-food chicken restaurant. Boston Herald's Judith Wynn quipped, "Are Chinese-Americans really as debt-ridden and volatile as the rest of us?" and answered that the novel "debunked the notion of Chinese-Americans as a 'model minority,' naturally inclined to modesty and workaholism."

The story of the Changs continues in Jen's next novel, Mona in the Promised Land, a book more on the comic side, as Jen told Hogan in the same interview. This novel focuses on Mona, the Chang's younger daughter, and the cultural confusion she experiences—and causes—when the family moves to the upscale, mostly Jewish area of Scarshill (a reflection of the real-life New York area known as Scarsdale, where Jen grew up in circumstances similar to those sketched out for Mona). The novel is a sort of testing ground for the idea that being "American means being whatever you want" to quote Mona. Renouncing her Chinese heritage, converting to Judaism, and changing her name to Changowitz, Mona seems to change ethnicities as easily as she would change her clothes. Other characters in the book behave similarly, trying on black, Jewish, and Oriental philosophies and mannerisms as the mood takes them. "Ms. Jen is good at capturing different voices, which is fortunate because the one thing all these people have in common is that they talk constantly about who they are," noted New York Times book Review contributor Jacqueline Carey. "[Mona in the Promised Land] has a wide-ranging exuberance that's unusual in what is still—to its credit—a realistic novel.…The book is both hopeful and smart, a rare combination. All the characters are basically good; they remind you that the optimism of the late 60's and early 70's was real. Ms. Jen even persuaded me for hours at a time that it doesn't matter whether you choose to become more or less 'Chinese'; that the forces that are binding us together have just as much strength as the ones that are pulling us apart."

The Changs again feature prominently in Who's Irish?, Jen's first collection of short stories, one of which, "Birthmates," was chosen by John Updike for Best American Short Stories of the Century. An Entertainment Weekly reviewer credited it with chronicling "the Chinese-American experience with tart realism and sometimes guffaw-inducing humor," and further noted: "Jen's stories are amazingly compressed, and she studs them with perversely funny social disasters that explode like skillfully placed narrative land mines." In "The Water Faucet Vision," narrated by Mona's elder sister Callie, the Chang parents argue violently in a dialect the girls don't understand. "In the American Society" traces Ralph's misadventures in assimilation. Time International's Hilary Roxe assessed "House, House, Home": "Pammie wants to live outside the American Dream her Chinese parents strived to attain, but she recognizes the differences between herself and other social rebels. Wondering at her nonconformist husband, she asks, 'Could an elective outsider ever know what it feels like to be the other kind of outsider?' Though Jen broaches such issues, she declines to provide answers, saving the stories from becoming didactic diatribes and allowing humor to out-shine analysis." Other stories in the book deal with immigrants, their children, and Chinese Americans visiting the ancient homeland for the first time. The collection was solidly praised by Jean Thompson in the New York Times Book Review; she wrote: "Jen's gift is for comedy that resonates, and sadnesses that arise with perfect timing from absurdities. Her subject matter is so appealing, it almost obscures the power and suppleness of her language. 'Who's Irish?,' at its considerable best, finds words for all the high and low notes of the raucous American anthem."

Jen has been recognized with two "living" awards: a Lannen Award in 1999 and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Strauss Award in 2003. The latter pays $50,000 a year for five years to a writer, who may not be employed elsewhere during that time. Jen joked to University Wire interviewer Hana R. Alberts, "The danger of this award is that one develops the largest case of writer's block one ever had." Jen intends to return to teaching at the end of the award term. She was teaching at Harvard when the news came but has also enjoyed teaching in literacy programs. A student at Harvard commented, "She was quick and witty. At the end of two hours, we wished we had two more." "She laughs all the time during class," said a seminar member. "She's pushing us. We're doing graduate level writing theory. I'm glad I got to catch her while she was here." Jen told the interviewer that she planned to "head for China for six months, and … to come back with plenty of material." Alberts added that "Jen said with the money provided by the award she will continue work on a novel … about a Chinese-American family with biological and adopted children." Newsweek interviewer Malcolm Jones asked, "How will this money change your life?" Jen answered, "Writing was becoming a luxury I couldn't quite afford. I had to have a job. So I have gone from someone who perhaps couldn't afford to write for some years to someone who needs to write" and "there are all these temptations, like writing for the movies—all these auxiliary activities which are related to artistic expression but are not artistic expression. Also, when you're young, you can live on very little with very little security. You never think about how much it costs to get a tooth crowned. And then suddenly you're older, and you've got kids and your teeth are falling apart. It's a tremendous gift, the ultimate deus ex machina."

In an interview with Powell's City of Books' Dave Weich, Jen addressed the simultaneous sadness and happiness of her writing: "Early on in my career people would say, 'Is this supposed to be funny or it supposed to be sad?' … I was somebody who simultaneously sees things as happy and sad. I am the kind of person who would make a joke on someone's deathbed, tacky as it may seem. It could be seen an Asian part of my sensibility, in the sense that it's a very Asian thing to imagine that opposites go together.… I don't know if that's completely true, but in any case that ying-yang quality certainly embodies a lot of these stories." To Weich's comment that the connections she makes are not heavyhanded, she responded, "I do hope there will be layers and layers of things for people to find. There are references and jokes along the way. Did you get the Oscar Wilde reference?" She concluded the interview, "Of course I'm interested in the Asian-American experience. But I'm also interested in architecture; I'm interested in religion. I'm very interested in the different realities, not just my own ethnic group."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Cheung, King-Kok, editor, Words Matter: Conversations with Asian-American Writers, University of Hawaii Press, with UCLA Asian-American Studies Center (Honolulu, HI), 2000.

Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr., editor, Creative and Critical Approaches to the Short Story, Mellen (Lewiston, NY), 1997.

Lee, Rachel C., The Americas of Asian-American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1999.

periodicals

American Journal of Psychiatry, December, 1999, p. 2001.

AsiaWeek, Friday, December 31, 1999.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 20, 1999, p. L12.

Atlantic, April, 1991, p. 108.

Atlantic Monthly, September, 1996, p. 114.

Austin American-Statesman, June 23, 1996, p. G7; July 18, 1999, p. K6.

Booklist, April 15, 1996, p. 1421; June 1, 2001, p. 1837.

Boston Globe, June 25, 2000, p. N6.

Boston Herald, May 16, 1999, p. 071; June 25, 1999, p. 064.

Boston Magazine, June, 1999, p. 145.

Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 1991, p. 13; June 27, 1996, p. B2; March 24, 1998, interview with Jen, p. B8.

Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), July 11, 1999, p. V5.

Entertainment Weekly, July 9, 1999, p. 70.

EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies, December, 2002, pp. 641, 675.

Far Eastern Economic Review, November 14, 1991, p. 56A; October 31, 1996, p. 47.

Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA), October 3, 1999, p. E3.

Glamour, April, 1991, p. 228.

Harper's Bazaar, May, 1996, p. 94.

Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian-American Cultural Criticism, fall, 1996, p. 103; summer, 1997, p. 61.

Houston Chronicle, August 18, 1996, p. 20.

Independent (London, England), May 14, 1998, p. 2.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1996.

Library Journal, March 15, 1996, p. 95; September 15, 2000, p. 144.

Long Beach Press-Telegram, September 18, 2000, "The Bashing of the Asian-American Dream," p. A13.

Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1991, p. E1.

Mademoiselle, June, 1996, p. 106.

MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, winter, 1993-1994, interview with Jen, p. 111; summer, 2003, p. 47.

Ms., November-December, 1991, p. 76.

Nation, June 17, 1996, p. 35.

New Perspectives Quarterly, summer, 1991, p. 56.

Newsweek, July 15, 1996, p. 56; June 7, 1999, p. 75; January 13, 2003, interview with Jen, p. 71.

New Yorker, July 8, 1996, p. 78.

New York Review of Books, August 15, 1991, p. 9.

New York Times, June 4, 1999, p. E40; September 15, 2000, "For Wen Ho Lee, a Tarnished Freedom," p. 35; December 4, 2000, "Writers on Writing," p. 11.

New York Times Book Review, February 15, 1991, p. 221; March 31, 1991, pp. 9-10; June 9, 1996, p. 16; June 27, 1999, p. 13.

NTU Studies in Language and Literature, December 2002, p. 71.

Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 1992, p. 88.

People, April 29, 1991, p. 25; January 15, 1996, p. 35.

Philippine-American Studies Journal, 1991, p. 1.

Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 20, 2001, p. 2.

Ploughshares, fall, 2000, p. 217.

Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, fall, 1994, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, January 18, 1991, p. 46; February 8, 1991, p. 25; March 11, 1996, p.40; April 26, 1999, p. 52; June 7, 1999, p. 59.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 1996, p. 5; May 26, 1996, p. 11.

School Library Journal, December, 1999, p. 164.

Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland), August 28, 1999, p. 10.