A Quote by Jenny Zhang

I often wonder if my being a fairly small Asian woman with a high-pitched quietish voice plays a role in how often men feel entitled to come up to me and tell me, 'You have this doll act,' or whatever.
Parents will often thank me for being a good role model for their kids or tell me, 'You'll never understand how much you mean to my daughter,' so then I feel I don't want to let down the parents, either.
But being Asian American, a lot of Asian American guys come up to me who are in interracial relationships and they tell me, 'Growing up my partner had a big crush on you and so you're probably one of the reasons why she married me, so thank you.'
Writing plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.
Some autistic children cannot stand the sound of certain voices. I have come across cases where teachers tell me that certain children have problems with their voice or another person's voice. This problem tends to be related to high-pitched ladies' voices.
If somebody from the past doesn't rise up from the grave and start talking to me, I haven't got a book. I have to hear that voice, the voice of the narrator. How she sounds will tell me who she is, and who she is will tell me how she will act - and that starts the plot in motion.
I'm surprised how often I'm asked about being a man with a woman narrator. I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. It's been done forever, but we seem to forget that. The whole notion of "write what you know" is not just boring, but wrong. Lately it seems like every novel has to be a memoir. I'm a boring person, but I'm a writer with a relatively vivid imagination. And when people ask me about how I find the voice of a woman, I tell them that my life is run by women.
How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I've come to believe.
I have a small circle of great friends who push me when I need it, tell me when I need to pick up my pace, and who make me want to be better. Sometimes, when I start procrastinating and just need to find that pep in my step, I think of how far I've come and how we can all be role models in our every day lives.
Interestingly, one thing I've found that neither women nor men give up on is the idea of men as protectors. Even in cases where the woman is earning more, they'll often tell me that if there were a fire or something, they would expect the man to be the one to protect them.
When men act up by being degrading, dismissive, condescending, shut off, or sullen, that can often dumbfound you as a woman and get you off balance. At that point, you can feel and look like a deer in the headlights, which makes you even more vulnerable to such a man's next volley of vitriol.
I was teased up until high school about my hair, being short, my high pitched voice, and just anything you can think of.
My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles.
I walk around a lot. People come up to me and say 'Hi,' but not that often. I mean, I get it plenty often, but sometimes I wish they'd come up to me more! I mean, I'm just a regular guy.
Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.
I often feel like the woman in your life is your driving force. She's your muse. She plays a big role in determining how confident you feel when you walk out the door. She can add 1,000 kilowatts of energy - or drain that out of you. She said, "No, you're not that funny." I thought, She knows better than anyone.
People often come up and tell me how much money I make in a year, which is funny because I don't think it's something I've ever said to someone.
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