Gish's Mother--loo Shu-hsin--is Born In 1925 To A Wealthy Shanghai Family Where Girls Are Expected To Behave And Be Quiet. Every Act Of Disobedience Prompts The Same Reprimand: Bad Bad Girl! You Don't Know How To Talk! She Gets Sent To Catholic School, Where She Is Baptized, Re-named For St. Agnes, And, Unusually For A Girl, Given An Internationally-minded Education. Still, Her Father Would Say, Too Bad. If You Were A Boy, You Could Accomplish A Lot. Aggie Finds Solace In Books, Reading Every Night With A Flashlight And An English-chinese Dictionary, Before Announcing Her Intention To Pursue A Ph.d In America. It Is 1947, And With The Forces Of Communist Revolution On The Horizon, She Leaves--never To Return. Lonely And Adrift In Manhattan, Aggie Begins Dating Chao-pei, An Engineering Student Also From Shanghai. While News Of Their Country And Their Families Grows Increasingly Dire, They Set Out To Make A New Life Together: Marriage, A Number One Son, A Small House In The Suburbs. By The Time Gish Is Born, Her Parents' Marriage Is Unraveling, And Her Mother, Struggling To Understand Her Strong-willed American Daughter, Is Repeating The Refrain That Punctuated Her Own Childhood: Bad Bad Girl! You Don't Know How To Talk! Bad Bad Girl Is A Novel About A Mother And A Daughter Forced To Reckon With One Another Across Decades Of Curiosity And Ambition, Elation And Disappointment, Intense Intimacy And Misunderstanding. Spanning Continents And Generations, This Is A Rich, Heartbreaking Portrait Of Two Fierce Women Locked In A Complicated Life-long Embrace-- Provided By Publisher.
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