Tiger Daughter
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
★FIVE STARRED REVIEWS★ NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS, BOOKLIST AND MORE!
Equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful, Tiger Daughter is an award-winning novel about finding your voice amidst the pressures of growing up in an immigrant home told from the perspective of a remarkable young Chinese girl.
Wen Zhou is a first-generation daughter of Chinese migrant parents. She has high expectations from her parents to succeed in school, especially her father whose strict rules leave her feeling trapped. She dreams of creating a future for herself more satisfying than the one her parents expect her to lead.
Then she befriends a boy named Henry who is also a first generation immigrant. He is the smartest boy at school despite struggling with his English and understands her in a way nobody has lately. Both of them dream of escaping and together they come up with a plan to take an entrance exam for a selective school far from home.
But when tragedy strikes, it will take all of Wen’s resilience and tiger strength to get herself and Henry through the storm that follows.
Tiger Daughter is a coming-of-age novel that will grab hold of you and not let go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Because of 13-year-old Wen Li Zhou's struggles with math, her father often deems her a "useless, insolent child." His verbal abuse also extends to her mother; once a vivacious woman, she now acts reserved to avoid Wen's father's outbursts. Wen finds peace with her best friend Henry Xiao. Both teens live in Australia with their Chinese immigrant families, and both plan to take the upcoming entrance exam to an "amazing, government-funded selective school," believing that attending it will change their lives for the better. When Henry's mother dies by suicide, however, everything comes to a standstill. Henry won't leave his house, and Wen's parents want her to stay away from him, but she refuses to let him suffer alone. To help Henry, Wen must tap into her own strength and learn to stand up for herself. Lim (the Mercy series) draws on her own experiences as a migrant child growing up in Australia, as outlined in an author's note, to deliver an eye-opening novel that covers weighty issues of abuse, grief, mental health stigma, racism, and sexism alongside the harsh realities faced by Wen and Henry's families. A tidy, uplifting ending, paired with Wen's vulnerable first-person voice, round out this heartstring-tugging read. Ages 10–up.
