Jenny Zhang (born 1983) is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based inBrooklyn,New York.[1][2] One focus of her work is on theChinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States.[3][4] She has published a collection of poetry calledDear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fictionchapbook calledHags.[5] From 2011 to 2014, Zhang wrote extensively forRookie. Additionally, Zhang has worked as a freelance essayist for other publications. In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection,Sour Heart, was the first acquisition byLena Dunham'sLenny imprint, Lenny Books, viaRandom House.[3][6][7][8]
Zhang was born inShanghai,China. When she was five years old, Zhang immigrated toNew York City to join her father, who was studying linguistics atNew York University, and mother, who had come to the United States after theChinese Cultural Revolution.[9][10][11] Her father withdrew from the PhD program he was enrolled in, began to work as a teacher, and re-enrolled in school for computer programming, with the family eventually moving toLong Island where her father ran a computer repair business.[4][12][13] She has a younger brother.[3][14]
After college, Zhang moved toSan Francisco where she worked as a union organizer for Chinese home healthcare workers and as an organizer for the writing non-profit826 Valencia which helps children and young adults learn how to write.[11][15] Zhang spent a summer inHungary teaching English as a second language.[11][17]
From 2011 to 2014, Zhang was a regular contributor to the online magazine for teen girls,Rookie, for which she has written both fiction and nonfiction since the magazine's inception.[20]
Among the essays Zhang wrote forRookie were a 2012 tribute to the rapperM.I.A.,[21]The Importance of Angsty Art, an essay on embracing "bad" writing,[22]Odd Girl In, an essay about the conflict between the impulse to rebel and the desire to join political movements, partly based on Zhang's experiences with organizing and activism in San Francisco,[23]Empathy Excess, an essay about emotional abuse and the limits of empathy,[24] andFar Away From Me, an essay about the search fordecolonized love, a conflicted teenage love forWeezer, and a deconstruction and investigation intofetishization,objectification, andinternalized racism.[25]
In 2012, Zhang published a collection of poetry calledDear Jenny, We Are All Find.[19][26] Zhang had written some of the poems that made up the collection during her time at Iowa Writers' Workshop, which she did in secret as the poetry program was separate from her fiction program.[27] She wrote the rest of the poems while living in the south of France. The poems were submitted to a contest for a small press,Octopus Books.[28]
In 2014,Lena Dunham asked her to join a promotional tour for her book,Not That Kind of Girl. This later led to Dunham publishing Zhang's 2017 book,Sour Heart.[29]
2015's "Hags" is an essay Zhang wrote in one night after watchingSenator Wendy Davis do a 13-hourfilibuster ofSB5, a Texas Senate bill that sought to limit access to abortion services. It was then published by Guillotine Books as a limited editionchapbook.[3][26]
In August 2015, one of Zhang's stories was included in the first issue ofLena Dunham'sLenny newsletter.[32]
In September 2015, Zhang wrote about issues of racism in the literary community forBuzzFeed.[9][15]
In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection,Sour Heart, was published byLena Dunham's Lenny Books imprint onRandom House.[6][33] Many of the stories were written and evolved over a long period of time, with the oldest having initially been written when Zhang was 19 years old, the short story called "The Evolution of My Brother."[3] Zhang said that the title and theme of the book came from a wish "to convey the unreality of childhood, the sweetness and the sourness of being so small, so helpless, and so dependent on adults. We tend to render childhood as purely idyllic and innocent, or totally nightmarish and traumatic, but there's a spectrum of nuance that lies between."[34]Sour Heart, a group of sevenbildungsroman stories, received positive reviews.[35][36][37]
In May 2019, it was announced thatSour Heart would be made into a movie, to be directed byCathy Yan[38].
Zhang, Jenny (27 March 2015)."Anaphora".The Hairpin. Archived from the original on April 10, 2019.
Zhang, Jenny (2015). "Don't Fucking Text Your Friends When I'm Reading A Poem It Took Two Years to Write". In Lauer, Lynn; Melnick, Lynn (eds.).Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation. New York: Viking/Penguin.ISBN978-1-101-61538-6.OCLC905345570.
Zhang, Jenny (July 2014).Hags. Guillotine Series #7. Archived fromthe original on 1 July 2014.[43][44]
Zhang, Jenny (24 August 2015)."Settling".Lenny Letter. Archived fromthe original on 2 October 2017. Retrieved12 August 2017. – also known asPity Our Errors, Pity Our Sins
Bolick, Kate; Zhang, Jenny; Machado, Carmen Maria; Smiley, Jane (2019).March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women. New York: The Library of America.ISBN978-1-598-53628-7.OCLC1104646242.
^Richards, Sophia (8 January 2017)."14: Jenny Zhang poet and writer".Mythos Magazine. Archived from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved14 August 2017.
