"Bad Bad Bad Girl" | Reviewed by Pat Sainz

“Bad Bad Girl,” by Gish Jen, has been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 must-read books of 2025. The autofiction novel is an account of the conversations the author Jen wishes she had had with her Chinese mother before her mother’s death in 2020 at age 96.

When Jen was born, a multi-generational chain of dysfunction and abuse sadly continued, broken only when Jen had her own children.

The novel also chronicles the immigrant experience and the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. The narrative details a moving account of cultural conflict with historical context.

Born in Shanghai in 1924, Loo Shu-hsin, Jen's mother, was shaped by her own mother’s bitter and abusive attitude.  Numbed by heroin within her wealthy compound, Loo’s mother resented her own daughter for her intellectual pursuits. She often told Loo she should have been a boy; ambition and intelligence were wasted on a girl.

The mother figure in Loo’s life, for seven years beginning with her birth, was her nanny Nai-ma, abruptly fired as punishment to Loo. For the rest of her life, Loo was anxious about people important to her just disappearing.

Loo was called a “bad bad girl” because she asked questions. Her questions caused further beatings from her mother. Loo’s wealthy banker father respected Loo’s brilliance, but the household was not his domain so he didn’t interfere in her cruel treatment.

In 1947, Loo-Shu-hsin was 23 with an education received from missionary nuns serving in China.  She left Shanghai alone to pursue a PhD in educational psychology. 

  Loo changed her name to Agnes when she arrived in America and entered a master’s program in New York.  She married a civil engineer and an entrepreneur, also from Shanghai; Agnes remembered her mother's constant refrain that she would never find a man to marry her because she was so outspoken.

        When Agnes became pregnant, she quit her studies, ending her educational journey just shy of acquiring her doctorate. In her later life, she became a teacher.

       Part Two of “Bad Bad Girl” tells of Gish Jen, Agnes’ daughter, growing up in a household where she also was abused verbally and physically by her mother. Jen was the oldest of four more children and the first girl.  Chinese girls at the time were not important even if they were born in America. Jen’s mother made it clear that it was Jen’s fault that her mother had to end her education when Jen was born. Agnes resented her daughter her whole life for this.

      Agnes continued her own mother’s own destructive habit of calling Jen a “bad bad girl” for her questions and her American ways.  When Jen was a successful author and wrote a book involving baseball, her mother’s love, she received little acknowledgement from Agnes who also never responded to Jen’s grandchildren’s significant successes though she fawned over her other grandchildren. 

        Jen cared for her mother until her death, but the wedge between them was never closed. Agnes died in 2020. In an emotionally significant passage at the end of the book, Jen lists in paragraph form 12 things she remembers fondly about her mother. 

      I am putting “Bad Bad Girl” at the top of the books I have read this year. The story is emotional, tender, heart-breaking, hopeful and educational (I found myself researching the Japanese occupation of Shanghai).     

     Gish Jen is the author of “Thank You, Mr. Nixon,” “The Registers” and more. She had received many literary honors for her work.

      Buy the Book.