Sigrid Nunez

Growing up in a New York housing project during the 1950s and 1960s, a young woman, the child of multiethnic immigrant parents, escapes the problems of her life into a world of dreams shaped by her parents' stories, her own reading, and the ballet. Reprint.

A Novel

A Feather on the Breath of God

linda

This book...it's just wow. Weike recommended this book to me in January. I think the first chapter was the hardest to get through. I thought it was basically another version of The Woman Warrior, which, to be honest, I hated. I finished the rest of this book on subway rides home - and I'm glad that it captivated me, but also did not make me miss a single station (*cough Yuval Noah Harari *cough).

Feather is divided into four sections: Chang, Christa, A Feather on the Breath of God, and Immigrant Love. I think my favorites were parts three and four. The first two parts are about Nunez's father and mother, respectively. Her father is ethnically Chinese but bears a Portuguese surname, having been born in Colon, Panama. Her mother is a proud German raised under Nazi Germany. Feather is about Nunez's foray into ballet. Immigrant Love is about her torrid affair with an Odessan named Vamid. 

Nunez's writing is simple and unpretentious. It's not like the poetic, elaborate stuff that Ocean Vuong writes, which can get sickening pretty quickly. Her words are sharp. I am fascinated by immigrant writers who are painfully self-aware that every sentence they write puts them further away from their families. Love, for immigrants, messy and fraught with tension, because in some way, every family is broken. The way that Nunez manages to wrap that "thick" love into beautiful narratives amazes me. 

“How in God’s name did I get here?” she would ask, her head in her hands, truly bewildered; as if she had blown here like a feather...At her lowest she would say, “I feel like a bug crushed under someone’s heel.” I can't wait to read Kundera. :)

i found this to be beautiful and profound and i wouldn't change a thing about it

Katie Chua

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of The Friend, comes this mesmerising story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love. 'A pleasure from the first page to the last' JONATHAN FRANZEN A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, who meet in postwar Germany and settle in New York City. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, the narrator escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet-these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality. 'A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Nina 

This was a great book. Quick to read and I love how the narrator simply places who her parents "are" on the page and doesn't really judge them either way. My favourite bits are when she's talking about her mother. I love how it shows what immigration really means. It makes you think about immigration for so long after you've read it.

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend, comes A Feather on the Breath of God, a mesmerizing story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love. A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese Panamanian father and a German mother. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, she escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents’ stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet—these are the elements that shape the young woman’s imagination and her sexuality.

Clara Jo

Delicate and unpretentious in its writing, yet transparent and personal in its storytelling, Nunez composes four powerfully intimate and vivid character studies, each tracing back to the experiences of the main protagonist. I resonated deeply with this one, and found her words at times illuminating fragments of my own life — tumultuous parental relationships, the complexities of self-identity in a mixed culture family, the experience of displacement as a second generation immigrant, a yearning for independence, to "make it," to understand your mother tongue(s), to be less afraid. I only wish to be half as insightful and observant about people the way Nunez is in this book.

Erica

I read it through in two days for my fiction writing class, taught by novelist Susan Choi, and I loved this novel. Even though the structure it's in can be confusing sometimes, I felt that it added to the telling of the story.

A Feather on the Breath of God A Novel

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