{"product_id":"the-original-daughter-a-gma-book-club-pick-isbn-9798217070138","title":"The Original Daughter: A GMA Book Club Pick","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.“Wei treats Gen and Arin’s complex bond with humor and pathos. A remarkably nuanced exploration of sisterhood and its limits.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublisher's Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Glorious. . . Revelatory. . . A tragic, haunting exercise in the limitations of not-quite unconditional love. . . First-time novelist Jemimah Wei poignantly, affectingly observes an extended family that sunders from dysfunction and betrayals in \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e— \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Jemimah Wei’s debut \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e goes for all the big stuff: ambition, time, family, forgiveness, constructing the self. Thrilling, to find a new author with an appetite for the whole spectrum of living, and the skill to get it down true. A contract of sisterhood is signed, then life, then ambition, then disappointment and heartbreak and and and. Wei’s prose is delicious, propulsively hurdling us through the lives of Gen and Arin, who will live in my marrow forever. \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is so much the real deal.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Kaveh Akbar, bestselling author of the National Book Award nominee \u003ci\u003eMartyr!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A beautifully crafted exploration of family, identity, and the complexities of cultural expectations. Wei is a talented, indelible writer with much to offer to a world that is in desperate need of saving.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Morgan Talty, national bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eNight of the Living Rez \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFire Exit\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fiery, funny, and incisive, \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e is at its core a ghost story. Once, invisibility was the hallmark of the working class, but Jemimah Wei knows in today’s world, where an internet connection allows one to walk through walls, be seen, disappear, and haunt from beyond the analog grave, a soulless transparency is power. A societal privilege ironically afforded to most everyone. This novel adroitly, yet playfully, turns the ways we see cultural appropriation, nepotism, and identity upside down. What a wise and wonderful read.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Paul Beatty, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sellout\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Utterly engrossing….elegantly composed…I loved this almost claustrophobic novel about the ways unrealized ambition can turn everything someone holds dear to rot…I cannot put this damn book down.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Roxane Gay, author of \u003ci\u003eHunger\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"From the very first page, \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e consumed me. I soared when Gen's and Arin's dreams came alive; I crashed when heartache wrenched them. With rare wisdom, Jemimah Wei examines the remains of our need to belong and be loved when we chase ambition above all else. Her writing is so incisive and visceral that I did not simply read \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e; I lived it. This astonishing debut is a tour de force that I'll never forget.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Qian Julie Wang, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eBeautiful Country\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“I laughed, I wept, I called my mom. Instantly and utterly enchanting, reading \u003ci\u003eThe Original Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e felt analogous to being a child again, pushing off real life just so I could stay in the warmth of its pages a second longer. This story of a family and its struggle for freedom, intimacy, and survival asks not just what it means to love, but love well, especially in a world where our relationships can both bond and break us. Jemimah Wei chronicles the eviscerating experience of living under the fracture of modern society with devastating care. Seismic.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—Jonathan Escoffery, Booker Prize nominee and bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eIf I Survive You\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eJEMIMAH WEI was born and raised in Singapore, and is currently a 2022-2024 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, and awards from Columbia University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Singapore’s National Arts Council, and more. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been published in \u003ci\u003eGuernica\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNarrative\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNimrod\u003c\/i\u003e, among other publications. She was recently named one of \u003ci\u003eNarrative\u003c\/i\u003e’s “30 below 30” writers, recognized by the Best of the Net Anthologies, and is a Francine Ringold Award for New Writers honouree. For close to a decade, prior to moving to the US to earn an MFA at Columbia University where she was a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow, she worked as a host for various broadcast and digital channels, and has written and produced short films and travel guides for brands like Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehttps:\/\/jemmawei.com\/","brand":"Random House Large Print","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303287967973,"sku":"NP9798217070138","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9798217070138.jpg?v=1767740821","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-original-daughter-a-gma-book-club-pick-isbn-9798217070138","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}