02 Mar / A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez [in What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature]
A young woman, the child of a Chinese Panamanian father and a German mother, grows up in New York housing projects trying to make sense of her identity. She survives her adolescence by immersing herself in ballet, escapes to college, and as an adult, teaches English to immigrants, eventually becoming involved with a Russian student.
A remarkable debut novel that has at its core, an powerful exploration of language – of English as a foreign language that both parents are forced to learn yet will never master, of the mother tongues of both parents that the narrator is denied, of the language that the narrator as an adult tries to impart to her students, and the broken language she shares with her foreign lover.
Review: “Asian American Titles,” What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature, Gale Research, 1997
Readers: Adult
Published: 1995