ABOUT THIS BOOK

Questioning the roles of women’s bodies and the emotions that drive them in Madden’s debut story collection

Following women and girls as they navigate everyday life in contemporary America, You Know Nothing explores the experiences of mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and lovers whose inner worlds are animated by a tangle of emotion—from desire to rage and everything in between. Yasmina Din Madden’s characters inhabit the margins of their cultures, their diverse backgrounds united by their profound unease and the female bodies in which each resides. Madden takes us into the lives of a ravenous mother who devours her own son, a woman who sands away parts of her body, a Vietnamese mother facing her too-American children, and a fiercely protective dog owner who wanders a dog park with Satan’s master. In this debut collection, Madden brings these characters to life in bite-size stories of surreal revelation and inquisitive long-form explorations alike, leaving newfound clarity and hypnotizing carnage in her wake.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

YASMINA DIN MADDEN is a Vietnamese American writer whose fiction and nonfiction have been published in Electric Literature, The Idaho Review, The Fairy Tale Review, and other journals. She is the winner of the 2022 Oxford Flash Prize, and she teaches creative writing and literature at Drake University.

REVIEWS

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by the Chicago Review of Books

“In her debut story collection of force and insight, Madden crafts a way into the interior lives of women young and old, empowered and repressed, exhausted, determined, and enraged.” —Booklist

“Madden lets visceral, tangled-up emotions shine with unwavering, clear prose that manages to immerse the reader immediately into the handful of paragraphs that sometimes comprise the entire story . . . Amidst vignettes that feel wildly plausible, Madden intervenes with a demand to suspend your disbelief.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Many of the characters and situations featured in You Know Nothing, exist in the charged space between intimacy and alienation. The collection’s title foregrounds a contradiction that reverberates throughout the book: the desire to know and be known, set against the stubborn limits of human perception, experience and empathy . . . a knowing, unsentimental, at times darkly comic examination of contemporary American life.” —Newcity

“Yasmina Din Madden’s stories weave through the lives of women with some of the most distinct voices on the page. She has a masterful grasp on how to make a large cast of characters, though a wide berth of stories, each of which feels wholly unique. Each of them feel fully realized.” —Debutiful

“Readers, I gasped. You Know Nothing is a triumph of imagination, heart, and understated emotion. These are tales you'd trade on the playground in an alternate universe--a universe you won't want to leave after reaching the last page. Each story unsettles as much as it entertains.” —Kelly Luce, author of Pull Me Under

“The propulsive, heart-wrenching stories of You Know Nothing explore the messy interiority of women who are on the brink of realization. With knife-sharp prose and unforgettable detail, Yasmina Din Madden pushes on her characters’ bruises until the reader also feels the ache.” —Maggie Su, author of Blob: A Love Story

“You Know Nothing is a wonder. At times electrifyingly surreal, at times achingly realistic, these raw and vulnerable stories feature women brimming with desire and rage. A haunting debut.” —Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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