Regular marked price: $13.95Discount Price: $11.86
Cost Savings: $2.09 (15%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780060542221
ISBN number: 0060542225
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: September 01, 2004
Publishing house: Harper Perennial
Release Date: September 07, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 105822
Studio: Harper Perennial
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, 25-year-old Jenny Shimada agrees to care for three younger fugitives whom a shadowy figure from her former radical life has spirited out of California. One of them, the kidnapped granddaughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity for embracing her captors' ideology and joining their revolutionary cell.
A thought-provoking meditation on themes of race, identity, and class, American Woman explores the psychology of the young radicals, the intensity of their isolated existence, and the paranoia and fear that undermine their ideals.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Interesting story but disturbing. I think it was meant to be that way because it shows the inescapable power one person can have over another.
Rated by buyers 
-
I'm satisfied with the copy of American Woman sent. I received it
on time.
Rated by buyers 
-
First, on period references:
The dearth of period references may actually strengthen the work. Having grown up in the 1970's, I think forced references to pop cultural 1970's knick-knacks would seem a bit contrived, given the larger reality that many of us were riding around in old cars from the 1950's and 1960's.
And since much of the novel takes place in small towns, it's logical that these places weren't bastions of up-to-the-minute 1970's newness.
Choi's description of Mrs. Fowler and Dolly were spot-on, because one of the really memorable things about the 1970's was how, in the midst of "radical" new fashions and new ideas, there was such a sharp contrast to a larger group of people wanting to hold on to more traditional "American" ideas. For every Asian-American family we knew during the Vietnam War era, there were 100 Caucasian families who unquestioningly hung their U.S. flags in the yard.
What seemed more significant in terms of period reference was the outdated thinking, bold, unrealistic ambitions, and broad claims of the so-called radicals. They are, in fact, just children playing with ideas that they have only received, and haven't quite thought through. What's more 1970's than that?
Second, on culture:
I read American Woman a few years ago and was dazzled. I've only recently read the reviews posted here. I'm puzzled by the reviews that describe Jenny Shimada as a not-fully-developed character.
It was my impression that the character seems not fully developed because Jenny Shimada is, in fact, emotionally stunted within the broader U.S. culture, which was, at the time, MUCH less integrated than it is now.
Jenny Shimada's suppressed emotional anger (which plays out - unusually - in physical violence) seemed in line with the emotional dislocation experienced by many Asians in the very first few decades after WWII. Just as Richard's Wright Bigger Thomas is a product of his culture-struggling-within-a-culture, Jenny Shimada may be (note, MAY be) read as a product of her own culture's specific experience during that specific time.
I actually felt a deep emotional bond with Shimada, who, like many older Asians in my own Asian-American family, was raised not to be emotionally expressive, but who felt deeply and intensely the turbulence of the American experience in the post-war years.
I am somewhat chagrined to ask this question, but I wonder if Choi's carefully drawn character rings "truer" for many older Asian-Americans because of our peculiar experience of living in (and loving) an American culture that is about "living large", while our own cultural orientation and upbringing during that time demanded that we shy from exactly that. Quite a different issue for our children, born after the 1980's.
My question isn't about how race affects the reading of the novel, necessarily, as it is about how culture affects our reading of the same novel. E.g., I think a lot of Japanese housewives could probably relate better to Flaubert's Madame Bovary than would U.S. housewives, because the structured societies of 19th-century France and modern-day Japan are much more similar. (Come to think of it, Shimada and Bovary seem more alike than not in some ways....)
For the same reason, critics constantly compare the modern Chinese actress Gong Li to U.S. movie stars of the 1930's - the modern mobility of American women now makes Greta Garbo's emotional reticence seem less relevant than, say, Cameron Diaz' open smile.
Since Choi comes from both a part-Asian and from a broader U.S. culture, I am curious about how much of what Choi wrote into the character was conscious, and how much of it was simply empathetically derived.
I'm also intrigued by some of the reviews here. It seems that some older female reviewers are more receptive to the book. Which again, underlines the possibility that it's not so much about race as about culture, and how the mobility of women may have changed so radically in the last sixty years that we don't realize how our reading of characters has changed.
Rated by buyers -
Slow start inexplicably focuses on a "bridge" character, who recedes through the main body of the story, but returns at the end. Fictionalized SLA plot includes a Japanese American girl who is both on the run (she was a radical terrorist bomber and her boyfriend is in prison for it) from the law, and from herself--the rage and disconnectedness she feels. She becomes a guardian of the last three members of the "army" that abducted Pauline, modeled after Patty Hearst, and eventually becomes her closest and most intimate friend--her very first real intimacy. Written with precise and sometimes poetic (if altogether too careful) prose, and remarkable details in physicality and body awareness, Choi's talent and intelligence are displayed in full. Structurally interesting in scene transitions--they take leaps without excuse, and we get it. Strong writing, less so in the understanding and complexity of characters.
Rated by buyers 
-
Susan Choi is, quite simply, a bad writer. Reading this book reminded me of the overexaggerated and ostentatious fiction stories that my classmates used to write in high school. Verbose, overblown, and absolutely pointless self-realizations take up probably 1/2 of the novel.
Choi attempts to falsely create a sense of suspense by writing the entire novel as if it were one big climax, and she ends up with an empty product as the result. While there might be interesting psychological constructions and tidbits of information about the Vietnam era somewhere in the text, everything is lost in unnecessarily grandiose flashbacks that distract from plot development and clichéed poetic prose that had me groaning every five minutes.
What's even worse is the single focus on characters who are arrogant, obnoxious, and completely irredeemable. I found myself constantly looking up to the sky and asking God, "Why is this author making me focus for hundreds of pages on lazy and rude revolutionaries who do absolutely nothing all day?"
You might pick up this book and think you're reading a story of epic proportions, but don't be fooled- American Woman is a terribly written novel with no plot development and characters who are easily detestable.
Find other books like this one:
