My mother had two unshakable beliefs that she tried to drill into me. The first was that I had to study and work twice as hard as my white peers if I wanted to survive in America, and the second… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
Mothers have always held such symbolic weight in determining a person's worth. Your mother tongue, your motherland, your mother's values - these things can qualify or disqualify you from attaining myriad American dreams: love, fluency, citizenship, legitimacy, acceptance, success, freedom. — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
I grew up in a Chinese American enclave where the person who lived down the street had literally lived down the street from my… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
I think it was really important for me before I 'debuted myself' in front of the world to have a private life with my… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
When it comes to love, maturity often gets a bad rap - second love is boring; it's practical. It's what our parents feel for… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
I seem to be drawn to these smaller forms, and I seem to be drawn to things that can be written and also read… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
Asian American success is often presented as something of a horror - robotic, unfeeling machines psychotically hellbent on excelling, products of abusive tiger parenting… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
When I was writing stories about Chinese American characters in my fiction classes, I'd get comments like, 'You should consider writing more universal stories.'… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
We lived in one of those half-basement apartments, and on our first night of being in America, someone reached through the grate that protects… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
That's what people expect: They don't want to read a slight novel. People don't want to waste their time on anything less than 'great.' — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
My privileged upbringing and education and linguistic fluency gave me such proximity to whiteness that it stung all the more to still find myself… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
I still catch myself trying to become the object someone imagines me to be, but then there are other times, when I am free,… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
How do we form a coalition of resistance without obliterating our differences? Not all lives matter, and we are not all the same immigrants. — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
