Such marvels the dead are: They never fail to surprise the living. This is particularly true of deceased parents and all the conversations they insist on having with their adult children. Now that ...

First, you get stuck with a crappy mom. Then she lives to be 95. That’s nearly a century of terribleness. In “Bad Bad Girl” author Gish Jen’s case, “terrible” doesn’t quite cover it. Her Chinese ...

In "Bad Bad Girl," Gish Jen attempts to reconstruct her mother's life from wealthy childhood in China to scrappy immigrant existence in the United States. (Los Angeles Times illustration; book jacket ...

Trigger warning for any daughter who has ever had a fraught relationship with their mother: Gish Jen’s remarkable and heartbreaking latest book, “Bad Bad Girl,” may prompt a flood of feelings not felt ...