Joan Is Okay
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Joan is a thirty-something ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. She is intensely devoted to her work and happily solitary, but she sometimes wonders where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life according to their cultural and social expectations.
After moving to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan’s parents have returned to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland now that Joan and her brother are well established in their careers. But when her father suddenly dies, a series of events sends Joan spiralling out of her comfort zone, forcing her to consider her life anew.
Deceptively spare, quietly powerful and shot through with sharp humour, Joan Is Okay is a portrait of a marvellously surprising woman you won’t forget.
Weike Wang was born in Nanjing, China, and grew up in Australia, Canada, and the United States. She is a graduate of Harvard University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry and her doctorate in public health. Her first novel, Chemistry, received the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a Whiting Award. She is a ‘5 Under 35’ honouree of the National Book Foundation and her work has appeared in the New Yorker. She currently lives in New York City.
‘With gimlet-eyed observation and laced with darkly biting wit, Joan Is Okay is a deeply felt portrait of a woman who’s effaced herself to survive—and how, in the face of devastating loss, she’s forced to confront her grief and her place in the world. In her second novel, Weike Wang masterfully probes the existential uncertainty of being other in America.’ Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
‘Joan isn’t just okay, she’s wonderful. I could listen to her smart, witty voice forever. Incisive yet tender, written with elegant style and delicious comic verve, Wang’s story of the day-to-day life of a gifted young Chinese-American ICU doctor amply fulfils the outstanding promise of her debut novel.’ Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wang's profound latest (after Chemistry) portrays two generations of a grieving Asian American family. Joan, a 36-year-old self-possessed physician, works long hours at her Manhattan hospital's ICU and lives alone in a sparsely decorated apartment despite the insistence of her well-to-do brother, Fang, that she move to Connecticut to be closer to him and his family. But when their father, who has lived in Shanghai with their mother ever since Joan went to college, dies after a stroke, Joan begins to feel unmoored. Their mother then returns to the U.S. after 18 years, only to be stranded in Connecticut due to the pandemic travel bans. Because of language barriers, her old age, and lack of a driver's license, she depends on her children to get around and to communicate. Wang offers candid explorations of family dynamics ("berating is love, and here I was at thirty-six, still being loved," Joan reflects after Fang shames her for not going with him and their mother on a fancy Colorado skiing trip), and Joan's empathy for her ailing patients, as well as her disapproving brother and sister in law, are consistently refreshing. It adds up to a tender and enduring portrayal of the difficulties of forging one's own path after spending a life between cultures.
