Jenny Zhang (born 1983) is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States.[3][4] She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags.[5] From 2011 to 2014, Zhang wrote extensively for Rookie. 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 by Lena Dunham's Lenny imprint, Lenny Books, via Random House.[3][6][7][8]
Early life
Zhang was born in Shanghai, China. When she was five years old, Zhang immigrated to New York City to join her father, who was studying linguistics at New York University, and mother, who had come to the United States after the Chinese 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 to Long Island where her father ran a computer repair business.[4][12][13] She has a younger brother.[3][14]
After college, Zhang moved to San Francisco where she worked as a union organizer for Chinese home healthcare workers and as an organizer for the writing non-profit 826 Valencia which helps children and young adults learn how to write.[11][15] Zhang spent a summer in Hungary 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 for Rookie were a 2012 tribute to the rapper M.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] and Far Away From Me, an essay about the search for decolonized love, a conflicted teenage love for Weezer, and a deconstruction and investigation into fetishization, objectification, and internalized racism.[25]
In 2012, Zhang published a collection of poetry called Dear 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 watching Senator Wendy Davis do a 13-hour filibuster of SB5, a Texas Senate bill that sought to limit access to abortion services. It was then published by Guillotine Books as a limited edition chapbook.[3][26]
In August 2015, one of Zhang's stories was included in the first issue of Lena Dunham's Lenny newsletter.[32]
In September 2015, Zhang wrote about issues of racism in the literary community for BuzzFeed.[9][15]
In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection, Sour Heart, was published by Lena Dunham's Lenny Books imprint on Random 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 seven bildungsroman stories, received positive reviews.[35][36][37]
In May 2019, it was announced that Sour Heart would be made into a movie, to be directed by Cathy 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 from the original on 1 July 2014.[43][44]
Zhang, Jenny (24 August 2015). "Settling". Lenny Letter. Archived from the original on 2 October 2017. Retrieved 12 August 2017. – also known as Pity 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.
