Juvenile Impulse, by Becky Zhang

"Across these landscapes and throughout her four novels and short story collection, Lucky Girls, which received the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, she has shown herself to be a keen observer of the fissures and convergences between cultures near and far, the power dynamics that shape communities, and the trespasses and intimacies that form across these gaps."

"The Arden School for Girls, with just sixty students per grade, attempts to transpose East Coast rigor onto the languorous climate of southern California, instituting high academic standards and following a fixed social hierarchy. As they approach adulthood amid the school's "impossible contradictions," the students find themselves caught between abstract freedoms and concrete rules. Recollecting this period, the narrator confronts anew the questions she and her peers had unknowingly addressed-those of selfhood, desire, and authorial agency."

"I don't usually write in the first person, or from a perspective this close to my own. What prompted this story was thinking about the ways my kids' school experiences are different from the one I had. Sometimes their dad or I will mention a memory that shocks them: the pipe bomb that exploded in the bathroom of his public junior high school in Birmingham, Michigan; or the tea"

Fiction spans Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, French Polynesia, and New York City, focusing on cultural fissures, power dynamics, and intimate transgressions across borders. A middle-aged narrator recalls the trials of an all-girls high school's literary magazine overseen by two male English teachers. The Arden School for Girls, with sixty students per grade, transposes East Coast academic rigor onto southern California's languorous climate, enforcing high standards and a fixed social hierarchy. Students approaching adulthood navigate impossible contradictions, balancing abstract freedoms against concrete rules while confronting questions of selfhood, desire, and authorial agency.

Read at Harper's Magazine