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3.5
The Original Daughter
ByPublisher Description
In 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.In 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.
Before 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.
When 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, The Original DaughterThe Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.
Before 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.
When 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, The Original DaughterThe Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.
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3.5
“Two sisters, one promise, and one original daughter. Encapsulated the tight bond of sisterhood so deeply that only people with siblings would understand and familiar with. Understand the sensitivity, the indifference, the need for independence, the pulling away but still wait to be reached, the inconsistency, the need for each other, the pride, and the words that cut deep. Gen, Arin, and their mother Su, one casted away daughter raising two daughters — one who eagerly ran away and one who longed to stay, it really doesn’t matter which is which at the end. They both lost their original mother.”“Reading this book from the eldest Singaporean daughter POV got me super triggered at Gen’s actions. But I somehow kept relating this story to my sisters. And towards the end, Gen, Arin and Mom felt so close to me and relatable that I sobbed for the last 10 chapters. 😭”
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