Typical American (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) [Paperback]

Gish Jen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Contemporary Fiction, Plume | Publication Date: March 1, 1992

A trio of young Chinese immigrants slowly transform into everything they once despised in the ""typical American"" as they set out after their dreams and create their own suburban paradise. Reprint. 25,000 first printing. Tour. NYT.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jen's wry but compassionate debut novel--the story of a Chinese student adjusting to life in America--is a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle fiction award. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Like Amy Tan and Timothy Mo, Jen's delightful first novel follows the hopeful lives of Chinese immigrants with a great deal of humor and sympathy. As foreign students in New York, Ralph Chang, "Older Sister" Teresa, and Ralph's future wife Helen become trapped in the United States when the Communists assume control of China in 1948. Banding together, the three of them innocently plan to achieve the American dream, while retaining their Chinese values. Predictably, just when they appear to have reached their goal, the lures of freedom prove too great. Ralph's greed leads him to sacrifice his family's security to build Ralph's Chicken Palace, while Teresa and Helen find their own passions ignited in illicit ways. Inevitably, the family--the Chinese symbol of unity--suffers more than a few cracks along the way. This is truly "an American story"--a poignant and deftly told tale of immigrants coming to terms with the possibilities of America and with their own limitations, foibles, and the necessity of forgiveness. Sure to be a popular purchase for public and academic libraries.
- Kathleen Hirooka, Stanford Univ. Libs., Cal.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Plume (March 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452267749
• ISBN-13: 978-0452267749
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #659,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gish Jen has published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New Republic, and other magazines, as well as in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Her honors include a Lannan Literary Award and a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. For further info, please see www.gishjen.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wry, ironic, emotionally complex novel- a brilliant debut., March 22, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Typical American (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Paperback)

It's only after reading this fascinating book that one fully appreciates the irony intrinsic to the title. This is a book that is thoroughly atypical in virtually all its aspects.
Typical American follows the lives of three Chinese immigrants in New York: Ralph Chang, his sister Theresa, and Theresa's roommate Helen, who becomes Ralph's wife. Theresa becomes a doctor, Ralph earns a Ph. D. in mechanical engineering and gets a job teaching at a local college, and Ralph and Helen have two daughters.

As they each become caught up in achieving the American dream, they must make difficult choices about the importance of success, family loyalty, and the people they hope to become.
Essentially, however, like all immigrant tales, the underlying aspect of the story is one of assimilation. Usually tales of Chinese assimilation into the American mainstream demand the forsaking of Chinese customs; conversely, preservation of Chinese traditions requires the rejection of any possibilities of assimilation. The dramatization of such cultural conflicts has become somewhat formulaic, and Chinese-American writers seem locked in this conventional depiction of the Chinese immigrant experience.

Not Gish Jen. In Typical American Gish Jen rewrites the formula that has long dominated Chinese-American immigrant fiction, and complicates firm notions of Chinese and American identities that have been staple elements of that formula.

Normally these assimilation tales are multi-generational sagas where the conventional opposition between American and Chinese cultures is usually played out through generational conflicts, in which the older, immigrant generation's insistent preservation of Chinese traditions are pitted against their first -generation offspring's desire to cast off those manacles.

Not here. Eschewing this "typical"' setting for her narrative, Jen breaks from the paradigmatic use of Chinatown that has been a staple of Chinese immigrant narratives. This also removes the Changs from the clutches of parental demands or strict Chinatown societal codes. Rather than settling in an established Chinese community for moral and financial support Ralph, Helen and Theresa remain very isolated in their new life in America. This isolation from the "parental' or "traditional" elements of Chinese culture enables Jen to illustrate the conflicts inherent to cultural assimilation within the context of the individual rather than a group. And, so, while the characters strive mightily to achieve "typical American" status-the full middle class lifestyle with all the accouterments and benefits that implies-they nevertheless still see many of the traits and behaviors attendant to that lifestyle through Chinese eyes and refer to these behavioral traits in Anglos pejoratively as "typical American" Behavior. Thus they are in the position of decrying what they actively seek to attain, thus brilliantly illustrating the often schizoid process of assimilation.

The first line of the book asserts that this is "an American story", but in fact this is neither a "typical Chinese-immigrant" story, nor a ""typical American" one. In the end, no one is "typical" anything. Ralph's revelation at the end is not the disillusionment of a Chinese nor an American, but simply a man confused by the complexity of the new context that surround him: "Kan bu fian. Ting bu fian. He could not always see, could not always hear. He was not what he made up his mind to be.

Both Ralph's and Helen's revelations at the end of the book 'are critical moments in which Jen invalidates the generational/ cultural conflict paradigm; she has deftly shown that the notion that the choice that one "stay Chinese" or "become American" is an illusion. In fact, the "typical" immigrant will never be either.

This is a wry, ironic, emotionally complex novel that is well worth reading.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic...but risky?, February 8, 2000

By 

vanishingpoint - See all my reviews

This review is from: Typical American (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Paperback)

Gish Jen is gifted, no doubt about it. A fantastic line writer, just about every sentence shines. She's funny as hell, too, when she wants to be. Mixing up the humor and the pathos, she can generate some serious amount of emotion from the reader.

The characters are very real and the dialogue between them is witty and smart. Jen effortlessly moves between the main characters' (Ralph, Helen, and Theresa) points of views in a close third-person voice, and as an immigrant myself, I found myself relating closely to many of the twists and turns in the plot...though that's not to say that the ideas in this book are immigrant-specific. Not at all, in fact -- the stuff that makes up this novel are broad and universal.

But (isn't there always a but?), there's something missing from these pages, and it took me a while to figure it out. What is it? Risk. I don't think Jen takes many risks...or if she does, they don't seem risky enough. It's a solid book, a first novel that any writer would be proud of -- but for me, it didn't have that element of risk (or maybe "menace" that Raymond Carver often referred to) that really makes (or breaks if done badly) a book.

It's definitely worth reading, though, just on writing alone if nothing else (and there's plenty, so read it!).

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There Is No Such Thing As American Dream, March 21, 2002

By 

Matthew M. Yau "Voracious reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Typical American (Contemporary Fiction, Plume) (Paperback)

Ralph, Helen, and Theresa immigrated from China to escape political instability in the post-War era. The trio of young ambitious Chinese immigrants slowly transformed into everything they once despised in the typical American as they set out after their dreams and created their own suburban paradise. Ralph, like many of his counterparts, struggled with his visa but mangaged to finished his PhD in mechanical engineering and obtained a university tenure. Together with his wife Helen (introduced to him by his sister Theresa), the young couple set out to make the so-called "American dream" come way in all possible ways: finding a split-level home in the suburbs of Connecticut, making huge bucks in fast food (America is such a fast food nation), walking dog and sending dog to training school, making excursions into adultery. Theresa studied to become a doctor who later on engaged in an affair with a man. Ironically, as the ambitious trio fulfilled their "American dream" (ahhhammm) they have become someone whom they despised in the first place-typical American: the typical American no-good, typical American don't-know-how-to-get-along, typical American just-want-to-be-the-center-of-things, typical American no-morals, typical American use-brute-force, typical American just-dumb, typical American no-manners, and typical American eating-junk-and-not-healthy. The trio began to adopt to more American vocabular but still retained their Chinese ways of thinking like "xiang ban fa"-think of a way. In a way, the American dream has corrupted the trio. Ralph became so money-oriented that he believed he can only fit in the society if he made good money. If he couldn't make a lot of money, he would be dubbed Chinamen. "Money, in this country, you have money, you can do anything. You have no money, you are nobody. You are Chinaman! Is that simple!" Even Helen, she allowed himself to engage in sexual quickie in her own house behind her husband's back with Grover Ding, who represented a typical American-born-Chinese that was not rooted in any traditional Chinese values. Afterall, the American dream will never be the same again. Gish Jen's writing has astutely portraited a typical immigrant experience through her witty style and choice of waords. As a Chinese-American, I can deeply relate to the Chang's experience-the desire to fit in but at the same time the quest for prosperity, success, and respect. The novel might seem funny but who can really understand immigrants' life struggles if not being one?