Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen

Thank You, Mr. Nixon Reviews

• 
  Elyse Walters

  “Thank You….Gish Jen…..
  “Thank You, Mr. Nixon” …..
  The collection of these short-linked-stories were incredibly eye-opening, entertaining, (a few as funny as can be), personal & emotional, historical, political, socially conscious, illuminating, intelligent, powerful, thought-provoking enriching, and overall open-hearted stimulating!
  
  A big thanks to my local book-dealer L C….(thank you - I love this book -thrilled you gave me the physical copy - one of the best formats for reading short stories).
  
  “A long journey begins with a step”……[a Chinese saying]
  
  The stories in the collection include:
  “Thank You Mr. Nixon”
  “It’s The Great Wall”
  “Duncan in China”
  “A Tea Tale”
  “Lulu in Exile”
  “Gratitude”
  “Mr. Crime and Punishment and War and Peace”
  “Amaryllis”
  “Rothko, Rothko”
  “No More Maybe”
  “Detective Dog”
  
  The title story, “Thank You Mr. Nixon”, is one of the funniest short stories I’ve read all year—it packs ugly history and a memorable punch in your gut…but I laughed and laughed. Very cleverly written.
  Here’s a funny excerpt from it:
  “It is terrible that people in your country called you Tricky Dick. That is so much more personal than plain capitalist running dog or petty bourgeois individualist. And it is terrible that they made so much fun of you because of your sweat. Is that why you wore make up when you were in China? Up here in heaven there is an American interpreter who says he accompanied you on your visit, and that he once saw a glob of pancake makeup hanging down from a hair in your nose. Of course, if American people did not like for their leaders to sweat so much, that is something Chinese people can understand. Really, it is just lucky that we are not as sweaty as you; also that we do not have hair in our noses”.
  
  In the title story, Tricia Sang (up in heaven), has a lot to say to Nixon. She wants him to know that his visit to China was characteristically dishonest.
  But she also wanted to thank his wife Pat who introduced her to a red coat that she fell in love with.
  When China opened up to the West, Tricia jumped right on board with the coat business. Her little business was successful, but after a while the foreigners began to bring their coats back to their countries to sell, and that made people dissatisfied because it turned out people in America did not like coats “Made in a China”.
  
  “Amaryllis” and “Gratitude” ….were a couple of other favorites—
  but every single story in this collection is unique and striking… About ordinary people… About food… About migration & exile, families-of different generations, daily life, social skills, needs for freedom, comparisons between American and Chinese culture…..
  
  Gish Jen spills-the-beans between the tensions that arise between the American and Chinese people. ….and thoroughly entertains us at the same time!
  She brings depth, heart, humor, and experience to these stories
  and is an important voice for the Chinese immigrant community in United States.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Lark Benobi

  A reference to Mark Rothko’s later period features briefly in “Thank You, Mr. Nixon,” and his abstract paintings are an apt metaphor for Jen’s own spare style: On the surface her storytelling seems simple and direct, but the closer you look the more layered and complex it becomes. Through characters distracted by the superficial colors of their lives, Jen invites her readers to consider profound questions about history, ancestry and identity.
  
  
  My review.
• 
  Diane S ☔

  3.5 thoughts soon.
• 
  Christine

  [Copy gifted by publisher #AAKnopfPartner]
  
  READ IF YOU LIKE...
  • Seeing the evolution of a country's reputation through personal stories
  • Interconnected short stories
  • Digging into the complicated relationship between China and the U.S.
  
  I THOUGHT IT WAS...
  A triumphant and poignant series of short stories, cleverly woven together with distinct purpose. In 1972, President Nixon visited China. That historic moment opened China to the world, ushering in a new age of tourism, commerce, and wealth. It also opened the doors to new ideas, values, and ideals, especially as the Chinese diaspora spread. This collection starts with Nixon's visit and then represents 50 years of U.S.-China relations through brilliantly written stories.
  
  I'm so impressed by how these stories work on a macro- and micro-level. They show us how each country's perceptions have changed over time. First, the Chinese are in awe of U.S. foreigners, so rich and well fed. The Chinese seem backward, in need of outside aid. All clamber for a chance to go to the states. But as we move forward in generations, a shift occurs. Wealthy Hong Kong city dwellers can't imagine why the American ideal is a boring suburban life. China becomes a key, undeniable player in business as it rises in power. As the collection culiminates in the present, it focuses on on the protests in Hong Kong, a symbol of the uncertainty around who now holds more power: Western ideals or Chinese governance?
  
  At the micro-level, these stories approach racial tension in an unique and honest way. Putting the country aside, how are Chinese people regarded in the west? Really smart, very timid, untrustworthy, racist. Why this collection shines is it masterfully captures all the different facets of China -- what it means to Americans, it's own people, and how it's own people see themselves.
• 
  Q

  Thank-you Mr Nixon- Gish Jen
  Published February 2022
  
  The first story in this book is the title of this book; and it is terrific. My favorite History teacher in college said ”It takes over 50 years to know the real truth of historical events.” President Nixon went to the People’s Republic of China on February 21, 1972. It was a significant political event. China was “officially” a Communist country then. The ties between the “West” and China had been cut off for many decades. Chairman Mao was still alive. He died 4 years later. It’s now 50 years after Nixon’s visit.This story does take a pause and looks back on that historic event. And then goes forward.
  
  The first story was narrated by a woman, who was one of the children Nixon spoke with on his visit. It’s filled with facts of the trip and political satire. I whooped and laughed a lot.
  
  When Nixon went to China I was 19 years old: a freshman in college and the Vietnam War was raging - “fighting communism.” Many people believed much of what was told us on Nixon’s visit. What was wonderful and delightful to me about this story are the facts Gish Jen raises to show us how propaganda works and about how we all form perceptions on things we see on tv, or read, etc.
  
  What struck me the most reading this story was my own and the American public’s naivity about China then and the biases we were offered and for many are still kept. What is the truth of other countries and it’s people? What is real? ThIs a question that permeates some of the stories.
  
  In this new book GishJen shows different angles of this theme in her stories. What do we really know? What are our assumptions and biases? In another story some American’s of Chinese Ancestry go to China on a tour. The husband of one says I thought all Chinese people eat rice. Why are they serving us wheat? The answer is rice is grown in the south of China and wheat in the north. There are so many facts about other people and countries we don’t know. Nor their history which shapes us and them. I appreciated these stories she offered.
  
  Nixon did some dumb things like Watergate. But his trip to China opened up a lot of exhibits and information about China’s history and what it offered to the world. Accupuncture being one of those things. And that changed my life and has brought me some well being through the years. So, Thank-you Mr Nixon!
• 
  Holly R W

  This is a book of linked stories with Chinese characters. I liked the earlier stories in the collection better than the others.
  
  "Thank You, Mr. Nixon" is a clever tale about a young girl meeting Richard Nixon and his wife Pat when they made their historic visit to China. The girl, now grown and deceased, is writing to Nixon from her current abode in Heaven while he is residing in Hell for his misdeeds.
  
  "It's the Great Wall!" is a story of a trip back to China by a Chinese immigrant to the U.S. (Opal). She wants to see her half-sisters and also to visit her mother's ashes. She is accompanied on the trip by her daughter (Grace) and son-in-law (Gideon - a Jewish man). Opal unwittingly becomes an unofficial interpreter for the other Americans on their tour.
  
  "Duncan in China" features a Duncan, who is a Chinese-American young adult. He finds himself floundering and goes to China to basically find himself. As a teacher of English there, Duncan becomes romantically attracted to one of his students.
  
  These were the stories that grabbed me. I am leaving the collection unrated, due to my flagging interest.
• 
  Cherise Wolas

  These stories span decades, from Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, to the present day, the Hong Kong protests, and COVID in New York City, and are prismatic - many of the characters reappear, and are interconnected, and we see them at various times in their life - Opal, for instance, who left China long ago and her Chinese American daughter and her multi-ethnic son-in-law all travel there on a tour, Opal returning for the first time, seeing her family whom she's not seen since, her daughter who has never been; there's Duncan Hsu, a young Chinese-American adult who goes to China to teach, and ends up falling for an older student in his class who introduces him to her daughter; there are immigrants and tycoons, the Koos are tycoons with three daughters; one white couple who is on that China tour with Opal and her daughter and son-in-law, end up trying to do with business with China, adopt a Chinese baby, and years later, their coffee shop is near where Duncan Hsu and his Chinese wife open a tea shop, and there is much more. These characters are nearly all displaced in one way or another - by geography, history, politics, by family dynamics or their own desires. What does it mean to be Chinese? To be Chinese American? There are issues between the generations, between parents and children, between couples. And there is a great deal of sharp humor. The links, tight or loose, among the characters is cleverly done, with minor subplots becoming major plots from story to story, and the effect is panoramic, replete with both comedy and tragedy.
• 
  Kim Lockhart

  These interconnected stories are equal parts cultural immersion, fraught emotion, and sly humor. The characters have taut edges and sharp life experiences, even those who exhibit the outward evidence of material success. The author addresses group prejudice with stark honesty, and exposes the common humanity which binds us all. When stripped bare, every soul craves the same basic needs of security and belonging.
  
  The writing is solid and affecting, like a full tight heart.
• 
  Allison B

  OMG, i swear these short stories I'm reading lately are really about to make me change my stance........ they are . TOO GOOD.
  
  Fav stories were probably “It’s the Great Wall!” “Amaryllis” and “Rothko, Rothko”; also love the Lao taitas in “Duncan in China”
  
  Her writing is just phenomenal, so direct, humorous and layered, I really looked forward to each story and where it would take me next. I loved how the characters popped up in each others stories. I'll add some quotes later, anyways, because I seriously just loved her writing.
  
  These story had everything for me- so if you like historical books, generational stories, strong believable characters, and books that make you think BUT ALSO laugh and ALSO just feel kinda warm inside and kind of sad??? but happy???, I'd recommend
  
  - “And suddenly she remembered why she had married him— all that keeping at things, all that getting to the bottom of things. All that insistence on finding the words for things.”
  - “… that was how China was. People were Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian all at the same time, and the mountains were, too.”
  - “but when he looked over at the woman at his side, these visions seemed tawdry and insufficient, the stuff of a schoolboy’s wet dreams. For Louise seemed to believe either that they were going to live, or else that she would die according to the code by which she had lived.”
  - “… Duncan felt a twinge of envy for the Lao taitai, who did not seem desperate at all now, but at peace—full of an old, large faith that would never live for him. It was he who was desperate— godless, modern man, whose most stirring visions came from sex scenes in movies. He looked on the blackened mountain, visible now with the rising sun. Then he closed his eyes with the other pilgrims and found, to his surprise, that he had much in his heart… He was a free man who had not even embraced his freedom.”
  - “Oh! To be a real person with a husband, and a household, and squealing dependents. Or at least to be involved in a sordid affair— in a narrative of some sort, in the sending up of shoots and buds.”
  - “A girl who has to learn a lot of languages so she can discover a lot of things.”
  - “But none of the towers have grass; they are all squeezed together as if they have been built on a subway at rush hour.”
  
  
• 
  Lindsay Shields

  **Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an early copy **
  
  The introduction of the stories details the historic visit from President Nixon in 1972, beginning the reformation of the U.S.- China relations, and the collection ends in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each story is delicately woven together through familiar characters of previous stories, creating a compelling narrative that chronicles time through the lives of and unique relationships between these characters.
  
  This collection is inherently political and describes the complexity of conflicting government ideologies, immigration, and cultural assimilation. Through this collection I was introduced to many historic events, concepts and perspectives, which I found to be an enriching experience overall. I thought the author was successful in creating depth in her characters in such a short amount of time, and was able to generate intrigue even in the confines of simple premises and slice of life stories.
  
  Stand out stories were:
  “It’s the Great Wall”
  “Duncan in China”
  “Amaryllis”
  “Rothko, Rothko”
  
  I recommend this read to those interested in complex interpersonal connections and how major political events shape perspectives for generations.
  
  Similarly if you enjoyed the short story collection “Land of Big Numbers” by Te-Ping Chen, you will likely also enjoy this
  
• 
  Bryn Lerud

  I have no idea how to rate this collection of linked short stories. I don't like short stories. I just can't keep them in my head when I read a collection of them. That being said, I like the subject matter here; the experience of immigrants from China in the United States in the last 50 years since China started opening up. There was one story that was incredibly moving to me; it was the longest story in the book, "Duncan in China." It was the story of Duncan who was born in the US to Chinese parents and went to China as an advisor and had devastating experiences with his relatives who never left and with people he met who acted as matchmaker for him. He did not get to end up with the girl he fell in love with. I wish there was a whole book just about Duncan; an expansion of that story. That story is why I gave the book 4 stars.
• 
  Gail

  This is the best collection of linked stories I've read in recent memory. It teaches a lot about the history of China post-Cultural Revolution, while at the same time humanizing what life has been like for many people of Chinese descent over the past 60 years (right up through the Hong Kong protests and the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic).
  
  This isn't a book I would recommend to everyone, but if you are looking for something wildly inventive that will teach you a hell of a lot about history largely left out of your high school textbooks, then this is a read for you.
• 
  Nancy

  I loved these interlinked stories for their humor, their humanity, and their insight into life in China and the lives of Chinese Americans. Starting from the first story, Thank You, Mr. Nixon, recalling the president’s China visit–and Pat Nixon’s red coat–the author takes us into the China behind the ‘Potemkin’ façade projected to the West. Gish Jen creates conflicted and real families and characters who take us into recognizable, and foreign, situations.
  
  But the bamboo curtain had parted. Not all that wide, really, but wide enough for tour buses to get through. from Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen
  
  The humorous tone is tempered by references to past trauma. “I remember when the Japanese came,” an old man tells his caretaker with Chinese grandparents, “The Japanese came and boom! Bombs. I once say a girl blown up.”
  
  Characters struggle for a green card, are pressured to fulfill parental dreams but flounder, looking for purpose. They go to China looking for roots and beauty and discover spies and people clamoring for sponsorship. They cope with Covid craziness. They learn the hazards of doing business with China. And, they learn by returning that they can’t go home again.
  
  II highly recommend these stories.
  
  I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
• 
  Cathy

  Gish Jen is a master of the short story form and this new collection is stunning. These interconnected stories are filled with humanity, told with a dry biting wit, gentle irony and incisive observations on intergenerational and intercultural relationships.
• 
  Jan Priddy

  Glad to have finished it.
• 
  Victoria Tang

  Love. Love. Love.
• 
  Roger DeBlanck

  Jen has been a writer on my radar, and her short story collection exploring U.S.-China relations appealed to me as the book that would introduce me to her work. Having been a great admirer of the novels, stories, and poetry by Chinese dissident writer Ha Jin, I hoped Jen’s work would resonate with me in the same way. But I had a difficult time staying focused even to finish the first tedious “letter” story of Thank You, Mr. Nixon. When I tried the next few, I found my interest failing due to Jen’s evasive style, which began feeling to me like excessive telling. So my inability to engage with her prose style left me giving up on this collection. I sensed the humor she wishes to infuse throughout her stories, but her humor did not have the biting wit and daring hilarity that I marvel over in Ha Jin’s stories and novels about China. Maybe I’ll try another of Jen’s books, but her stories didn’t register with me.
• 
  Natalie Park

  This wonderful collection of short stories resonated with me. They cover Chinese and Chinese American characters and their experiences in the world, with family and friends, and how the past and present shape them. Entertaining and thought provoking.
• 
  Allegra Goodman

  What a witty and wise collection. I relished these stories about China and the Chinese diaspora. Poignant, moving, thought-provoking, and at times laugh out loud funny. Gish Jen is a master.
• 
  Erika Dreifus

  Connecting the (not-too-distant) past and present—the book ends with a story set during the COVID era—these stories and their often also-connected characters show a variety of Chinese and Chinese-American experiences.
• 
  Robin Meadows

  Nuanced and compassionate, these linked stories offer an insider's view of the many Chinese-American experiences - Chinese people who came to the US but miss the China they grew up in, Chinese people desperate to come to the US, first-generation Chinese-Americans who feel like they don't fit in in either country etc. Gish Jen is a gifted writer with a surprisingly (and welcome) light touch considering the weight of her subject.
• 
  Pam

  I understand what she was doing, but I don't think it was done particularly well.
• 
  Linda Cutting

  Gish Jen’s new collection of connected short stories, Thank You, Mr. Nixon, begins with exactly that––a thank you letter written to President Nixon after his historical visit to China in 1972. The letter is written in a language that is utterly naïve to western ways, and therefore makes us laugh at ourselves. It’s purported to be written from heaven while Nixon is in hell, so there is much to glean from the heaven-sent wisdom of the writer, who was a little girl when Nixon came to China. She’s thanking Nixon mostly for his wife’s coat, but begins with her own coat, pieced together in the factory where her mother works––“I thought it was the most beautiful coat in the world until I saw your wife’s red coat. Can I call her Pat, now that we are all dead?” In her brilliant way, Gish Jen gets us to believe her characters so completely, that by the end of the letter, when the letter-writer tells Mr. Nixon she is sorry for him, and suggests, “If you ever draw up a petition to be moved to a cooler pit, I will sign it,” we feel a little sad for “Tricky Dick,” which, by the way, the letter’s author says is a terrible term––“so much more personal than capitalist running dog…” which we can guess, is the way the Chinese Communist government taught her to view him. This story is a perfect introduction in a child’s voice to the changes that will come to China after it opens its doors to the west.
  
  In the next story, about an American couple coming to China to visit just after it has opened up, we get our first glimpse of the naivete of Americans toward China, even when the wife herself is Chinese American. Her husband is a white American, and while they were at home, they mostly forgot about being different races. But in China, “it was hard to forget…he was white with a dark beard and wild-man hair…while Grace was, like most of the people around them, a smooth human with smooth hair. Grace’s mother, Opal, who is from China and accompanies them, also translates what the Chinese tour guide shares for them. The reader gets to “eavesdrop” on Opal and her relationship with her homeland, both through the translations and the Chinese tour guide––what gets said vs. what gets omitted. And near the story’s end, Opal’s heart is cracked wide open with grief as she visits with her sisters the place where their mother’s ashes are interred. “This Opal understood that for years and years…she, her mother’s daughter, had been unable to go home. And standing here now, in this room, with her sisters, this Opal understood she never could.” The story ends with Opal explaining how she knew what to translate and what to leave out regarding both questions to the tour guide and her answers, “I understood her heart. She understood mine…That’s what I told my mother in heaven.” When Grace asks her mother how her mother-in-heaven responded about the people who don’t understand, Opal answers, “She said, you will translate for them all the rest of your life.”
  
  My favorite story in the collection is “Gratitude” which begins with the question, “For what did one raise these children?” and continues with, “Did not parents who had sacrificed…deserve a child who at least left her cell phone on?” The parents, Tina and Johnson Koo, have lost track of their third daughter, Bobby, who lives in New York. They go there to track her down, and via a connection made with another family, the Hsu family, whom we’ve already met in previous stories, they collaborate in a real estate scheme to find Bobby. She’s apparently platinum-blonde when they finally meet up, and she’s furious at her parents’ surprise appearance. “This is what you call deceit,” Bobby says, then her father cups his hand to his ear as if he doesn’t understand. “Don’t give me that your-English-is-too-la-di-da-for-me look…” and her father responds with, “La-di-what” then winks at her. There is so much about what goes on in all families here, but one thing Gish Jen pulls off so beautifully is the Chinese distaste for American Chinese food, even a sophisticated and wealthy family like the Koos. “They noticed that the fish in the tanks were not like the fish in Hong Kong…this fish tasted half-dead, as if it had been eating hamburgers.” And one of my favorite food descriptions, “An egg white dish that in Hong Kong would have been soft as a cloud was here more like a doormat.” The story ends with a taxi pulling up, one that’s spewing exhaust. When Bobby asks if her parents want it, and her father tells her “no,no,no, look at that muffler, she abruptly hugged them” and gets into the taxi herself. The mystery that is Bobby never gets fully resolved. However, in the very last story, where we get a surprising glimpse of her. I won’t spoil the ending, but I do want to share that this is such a gripping collection of linked stories (not obviously linked), and the changes in China over time, as well as American awareness and unawareness of it, that if you love reading and laughing and crying between the lines, this is a book you should not miss!
  
  
  
• 
  Janet

  A very interesting collection with some really great characters.