Book Review #15 –  Sour Heart (Jenny Zhang)  

*****

This is a brilliant book. A collection of short stories with some interwoven threads, it is a raw and honest look at immigrant life. The broad theme of the book is the first and second generation immigrant experience in NYC. It goes so deep into the challenges and the hopes of moving to a new country during an era where there wasn’t technology to keep connections with the old world and the new. Almost disgusting at points in terms of how explicit it was, it is unflinching and is the best encapsulation of the immigrant experience I have ever read.