Do You like book American Woman (2004)?
I only read about three chapters of this book before calling it quits. I'd hoped it would be interesting. The story, although fiction, reimagines the events following the abduction of Patty Hearst by radicals in the 1970s. Patty was the gal that ended up adopting her kidnappers radical ideas. The book was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize so I figured the writing would be good. A few reasons I stopped: 1. Bad language (horrible). 2 I despised both main characters after reading only three chapters. 3. I found Choi's writing style unsatisfactory. Her sentences overrun with commas- hard to follow the plot. Changing point of view within the same paragraph, etc. 4. My reading time has been slowly diminishing (4 kids!) like drapes closing on a window. Too many other books more worthy of my time.
—Kristen
I was assigned to read this for a class, which means that I was basically guaranteed to hate it. (I have a bad history with required reading - see Summer of My German Soldier and The Old Man and the Sea)The story focuses on Jenny Shimada, who is based on a real Japanese-American woman who worked for the SLA in the 70's and was involved in the Patty Hearst kidnapping. American Woman is a fictional account of what happened in the time between Patty Hearst joining her captors and the group being ar
—Madeline
I was particularly interested in this book because my own second novel (I hope!) is also about issues of class war and centers around a kidnapping. Choi's book is broadly based on one of the more well-known 20th century kidnappings, that of Patricia Hearst who famously came to sympathize with her captors (a phenomenon known as the Stockholm syndrome) and joined them in committing a bank robbery. Choi's fictional account, though, actually focuses more on a different character. Jenny, a young woman of Japanese descent, takes on the task of keeping the escaped members of the revoluationary cadre 'safe,' something the members themselves generally fail to appreciate. Jenny is an incredibly complex character whose emotional response to living on the lam, exploring the impulses of youth, facing her weaknesses and motives and humanity, provides the reader with a powerful template for understanding the context of an important era in American experience and for considering the ways in which we are all products of our personal and political histories.
—Beth