\n\u2018Looking for Tank Man\u2019\u00a0by Ha Jin<\/p>\n
Won\u2019t somebody please think of the genres!<\/p>\n
OK, I\u2019ll admit: I\u2019m being a bit facetious here. All six of the following notable releases do deserve your attention for one reason or another \u2014 many, precisely for their spry dance with the expectations established by the genres they invoke. But I do ask that, when you pull one of them down and crack it open, you at least spare a thought for the poor, polite label that has been left behind, flaunted and dejected, on the bookshelf where it had stood.<\/p>\n
(Other Press)
\n\u2018Looking for Tank Man\u2019\u00a0by Ha Jin<\/p>\n
Jin Xuefei had been in the U.S. for what was to be a temporary stay, pursuing graduate studies after his time in the Chinese army, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in 1989. He never returned to China; he began writing in English as Ha Jin, condemned Chinese censorship<\/a> and claimed several of America\u2019s highest regarded literary prizes<\/a>. But the violent suppression of student protests at Tiananmen \u2014 his \u201cturning point,\u201d<\/a> he told NPR in 2014 \u2014 continues to haunt him in his effective exile.<\/p>\n In his latest novel, a fictional Chinese graduate student, studying in the U.S. years later, turns her research toward comprehending and coming to terms with the massacre \u2014 and reckoning with the urgency of keeping its memory alive.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t call Jen<\/a>\u2019s new book a memoir, exactly. This gimlet-eyed account of a difficult mother-daughter relationship makes up too much stuff to qualify; but then, to call the book a novel feels misleading too. The book is a candid portrait of her relationship with her mother, Agnes, even if it steers more toward emotional truth than factual accuracy. We can leave these questions for the philosophers, or whoever decides the genre tags on Amazon. (Same difference?) The point is, Jen has applied her peculiar set of skills \u2014 a candid but big-hearted style once described by Fresh Air\u2019s Maureen Corrigan as \u201cFrank Capra-esque\u201d \u2014 to one of the central dramas of her own life.<\/p>\n Louise-Bennett\u2019s books don\u2019t tend to lend themselves to snappy back-cover summaries. Conflict and other traditional fiction-fuels are found in them, sure; it\u2019s just that those external stimuli often end up feeling secondary to the expansive inner life of her unnamed narrator. In her latest novel, as in Pond and Checkout 19<\/a> before it, a snapshot of the action \u2014 in this case, a woman reflecting on her memories of a fading relationship and wondering at the nature of love \u2014 doesn\u2019t exactly scream \u201cpage-turner.\u201d But when the pages are actually turning, the effect, as a reviewer explained for NPR, can be \u201cunusual, and so unsettlingly pleasurable.\u201d<\/p>\n (Knopf)
\n\u2018Bad Bad Girl\u2019\u00a0by Gish Jen<\/p>\n (Riverhead Books)
\n\u2018Big Kiss, Bye-Bye\u2019\u00a0by Claire Louise-Bennett<\/p>\n (Ecco)
\n\u2018Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy\u2019\u00a0by Julia Ioffe<\/p>\n