Revenge Of The Mooncake Vixen

An uproarious debut that lays bare the complicated generational relationships of Chinese American women. Raucous twin sisters Moonie and Mei Ling Wong are known as the “double happiness” Chinese food delivery girls. Each day they load up a “crappy donkey-van” and deliver Americanized (“bad”) Chinese food to homes throughout their southern California neighborhood. United in their desire to blossom into somebodies, the Wong girls fearlessly assert their intellect and sexuality, even as they come of age under the care of their dominating, cleaver-wielding grandmother from Hong Kong. They transform themselves from food delivery girls into accomplished women, but along the way they wrestle with the influence and continuity of their Chinese heritage. Marilyn Chin’s prose waxes and wanes between satire and metaphorical lyric, referencing classical Chinese tales and ghost stories that are at turns sensual, lurid, hilarious, shocking, and surreal.

Moonie and Mei Ling are looked after by their grandmother, an indomitable matriarch, ruthless manager of 'The Double Happiness' restaurant and fount of endless titbits of Chinese mythology. Feared and renowned in the neighbourhood - and stubbornly attached to the giant meat cleaver she keeps in her handbag - eccentric Grandma Wong weaves a magical world of surreal stories and ancient wisdom around her two wayward granddaughters. However, the girls' lives are also being drawn forward by the inexorable pace of assimilation and the ever-beckoning American dream, and as fascinated as they might be by Buddhist philosophy, they are also cool, hip American girls with straight-A grades and scores to settle - with the neighbourhood boys who tease them and with the unforgiving media, which tells them that they should look like Barbie dolls and not like Chinese girls.

A rich, illuminating compilation of selected and new poems from Marilyn Chin, "a poet of contradictions, poignant sentiment, beat-your-ass toughness, and unexpected humor" (Los Angeles Review of Books). Spanning thirty years of dazzling work—from luminous early love lyrics to often-anthologized Asian American identity anthems, from political and subversive hybrid forms to feminist manifestos—A Portrait of the Self as Nation is a selection from one of America’s most original and vital voices. Marilyn Chin’s passionate, polyphonic poetry travels freely from the personal to the mythic, from the political to the spiritual. Deeply engaged with the complexities of cultural assimilation, feminism, and the Asian American experience, she spins precise, beautiful metaphors as she illuminates hard-hitting truths. A Portrait of the Self as Nation celebrates Chin’s innovative activist poetry: her fearless and often confrontational early collections, Dwarf Bamboo and The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty; the rebellious, vivid language of Rhapsody in Plain Yellow; and the erotic elegies of Hard Love Province. Also included are excerpts from Chin’s daring novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, and a vibrant chapter of new poems and translations. In poems that are direct and passionately charged, Marilyn Chin raises her voice against systems of oppression even as her language shines with devastating power and beauty. Image after image, line by line, Chin’s masterfully reinvented quatrains, sonnets, allegories, and elegies are unforgettable.

A fusion of east and west, high culture, popular culture, and ancient Chinese history mark this distinguished collection. In traditional narratives and playful song, Marilyn Chin elegizes the loss of her mother and grandmother and unravels the complexities of her family's past. She sings out the trials of immigration, exile, thwarted interracial love, and social injustice personal revelations leading to a universal cry for compassion and healing.

In the 15 years since this book came out, Marilyn Chin has been widely recognized as a consummate poet of the hybrid experience, blending East and West, popular and high culture, personal and political. Praised for its streetwise lyricism, this groundbreaking volume captures a young immigrant woman’s perspective as she encounters the nexus of tradition and commercialism in modern, diverse, and urban California. With this new edition, a modern classic is reintroduced to a new generation of readers.

"Marilyn Chin's poems depict the Asian American struggle with assimilation and describe the resulting alienation or acceptance with astonishing honesty and clarity"--Back cover.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE 2021 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR LESBIAN FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this blazing debut of one family's queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets. One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman's body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterwards, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighbourhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother's letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth--and that she will have to bring her family's secrets to light in order to change their destiny. With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family's history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood.

A sheltered Pakistani girl is sent to America by her parents, with unexpected results: “Entertaining, often hilarious . . . Not just another immigrant’s tale.” —Publishers Weekly Feroza Ginwalla, a pampered, protected sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl, is sent to America by her parents, who are alarmed by the fundamentalism overtaking Pakistan—and influencing their daughter. Hoping that a few months with her uncle, an MIT grad student, will soften the girl’s rigid thinking, they get more than they bargained for: Feroza, enthralled by American culture and her new freedom, insists on staying. A bargain is struck, allowing Feroza to attend college with the understanding that she will return home and marry well. As a student in a small western town, Feroza finds her perceptions of America, her homeland, and herself beginning to alter. When she falls in love with a Jewish American, her family is aghast. Feroza realizes just how far she has come—and wonders how much further she can go—in a delightful, remarkably funny coming-of-age novel that offers an acute portrayal of America as seen through the eyes of a perceptive young immigrant. “Humorous and affecting.” —Library Journal “Exceptional.” —Los Angeles Times “Her characters [are] painted so vividly you can almost hear them bickering.” —The New York Times