Blog tour: The Original Daughter

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei!

More about the book…

Singapore, 1996.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead.

Gen and Arin grow up as sisters in Singapore: a place where insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice in the realms of imagination and play. As the sister’s struggle toward individual redemption, their story reveals the fault lines of Singaporean society, our desperate need for acceptance, and our yearning to be loved.

Vivid and visceral, The Original Daughter is a breathtaking act of empathy by a new literary star.

More about the author…

Jemimah Wei was born and raised in Singapore and is currently a 2022-2024 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

She is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships and awards from Columbia University, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Singapore's National Arts Council, and more.

Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been published in Guernica, Narrative, and Nimrod, among other publications.

She was recently named one of Narrative's '30 below 30' writers, was recognized by the Best of the Net Anthologies, and is a Francine Ringold Award for New Writers honoree.

For close to a decade, prior to moving to the US, she worked as a host for various broadcast and digital channels and has written and produced short films and travel guides for brands such as Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon.

My impressions…

Jemimah Wei’s debut is a powerful exploration of sisterhood, identity, and the pressure of societal and family expectations. Told through Gen’s eyes, it follows her complicated bond with Arin as they grow up in Singapore’s demanding academic culture. As they grow up from children to complicated adults, the characters aren’t always likeable, but they are vulnerable and deeply human.

This novel is one not to be missed if you enjoy emotive and character-driven stories.

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