Bestiary: The blazing debut novel about queer desire and buried secrets

ISBN-13: 9781529111965 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021

K-Ming Chang

Opis

Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this blazing debut of one familys queer desires, violent impulses and buried secrets. One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a womans body. Her name was 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 estranged grandmother; a visiting aunt leaves red on everything she touches; a ghost bird shimmers in an ancient birdcage. All the while, Daughter is falling for a neighbourhood girl named Ben with mysterious stories of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmothers letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies an old Taiwanese myth, and fears the power of the tiger spirit bristling within her to cause pain. She will have to bring her familys secrets to light in order to derail 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 magical realist aesthetic of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one familys history from Taiwan to Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages and girlhood.

Recenzje

A powerful novel that will sit inside you for days after reading Lucy Knight Sunday Times

O autorze

K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the novel Bestiary, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.