The Original Daughter: A GMA Book Club Pick

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK - NOMINATED FOR THE 2026 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

In this dazzling debut, Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

"Precise, layered and moving, The Original Daughter is a book not to miss." -NYTBR

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat inworking-class Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a brutally competitive place where the insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. The sisters become inextricably bound as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges the sisters, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In this story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, imbued with equal parts emotional clarity and searing social insight.

Author: Jemimah Wei
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 05/06/2025
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.47h x 6.42w x 1.52d
ISBN: 9780385551014


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/01/2025 pg. 3
Booklist 04/01/2025 pg. 35
Shelf Awareness 05/03/2025
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2025
Publishers Weekly 06/02/2025

About the Author
JEMIMAH WEI was born and raised in Singapore; she is now based between Singapore and the United States. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University anda Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. A recipient of awards and fellowships from Singapore's National Arts Council, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Writers in Paradise, she was named one of Narrative's "30 Below 30"writers and is a Francine Ringold Award forNew Writers honoree. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and appears in Guernica, Narrative, and Nimrod, among other publications. For close to a decade, Wei was a host for various broadcast and digital channels, and she has written and produced short films and travel guides for Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon. This is her first novel.

https: //jemmawei.com/