Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - Sour Heart

oh wow! what a collection! i was first introduced to Jenny Zhang when i read "We Love You Crispina" in a creative writing class in college many years ago. this book has been on my Want-to-Read since then, but i didn't get around to reading it until, well, now. i'm reading short story collections/anthologies this month for inspiration as i write my own short stories.

i enjoyed "We Love You Crispina", the first story in the collection, because of the voice. Zhang is so so so good at it. the narrators are vulgar, naive in the way children are, but also mature in the way that children from marginalized backgrounds tend to have to be. all of the narrators are pre-teen/teen girls, ages ranging from 7 to 15 (except two stories that follow the narrators into adulthood), who grew up in poverty in Queens(Brooklyn in one case), NY as the child of Chinese immigrants. the stories deal with race, class, sexuality, family, and a score of other topics that a teen girl might encounter in her short life.

as other reviews pointed out, the stories are very similar. while i think Zhang is a strong writer of voice, all of the narrators kinda have the same one? the exception is the last story. that story follows the same narrator as the first story, "We Love You Crispina", but she is mostly an adult in the last story, rather than 11, which is how old she is in the first one. other than that, they do start to all sound similar. this would have maybe worked better as a novel-in-stories, or if she played with a structure like that, rather than attempting to make these distinct short stories/characters. though i will say, i really enjoyed how these are loosely linked–the narrator of the first and last story is mentioned in every other story.
my favorite stories were:
- We Love You Crispina
- Why Were They Throwing Bricks?
- Our Mothers Before Them

Content Warnings

ayesha1816's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I thought that the characters and the stories blended together... it was almost as if this would've been better as a novel. Which is a weird thing to say about a short story collection.

Very strong trigger warnings for a LOT of stuff throughout/

Content Warnings

pang's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

queertrash's review

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emotional funny sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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