The New Yorker: Fiction cover image

Weike Wang Reads Lara Vapnyar

The New Yorker: Fiction

CHAPTER

Lara Vafnir's Daughters

One thing that's really interesting is just the complete absence of the men from the story. Tanya's father resurfaces, but we never see him and it's not clear if she even sees him. We get this one quick glimpse of Tanya's husband, but they're bit players. Even the father doll is a bit player. He's just there to kind of trigger a fight. Why do you think Lara Vafnir constructed it that way? Well, it goes with the fatherlessness of that era and how something was broken about these fathers,. And the narrative is dominantly female.

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