Name: Eating Chinese Food Naked
ISBN: 9780671011451

Mei Ng

World-weary Columbia graduate Ruby Lee is forced to confront the problems she has tried to avoid, including the issues surrounding her parents' estrangement, her need for love and comfort, and her family's laundry business. Reprint.

A Novel

Eating Chinese Food Naked

Eva Ströberg

This book is so easy to read, but I don't like it.

Ruby is the youngest daughter of a Chinese immigrant family who lives in Queens. Her dad has a laundry business, her mom works in a clothing factory. I think they're getting by just fine economically. However it's a whole another thing mentally as she grew up witnessing how much her dad ridiculed and bullied her mom every time, up until the point that she just wanted to sweep her mom and take her away somewhere, away from her dad. 

She was okay, living on her own in the outside world, until she had to crawl back to her parents' laundry home while she was figuring out about her life. She went back to her old routine as a kid, sleeping in the same room with her mother, picking her mother up from her factory, carrying her groceries and so on, and at some point fantasising about having sex with her mother, while she could just pick up stranger and have sex with him although she has a some sort of boyfriend, a white Jewish boy who was terribly in love with her.

To be honest, I don't know what's wrong with Ruby. Yes, growing up in a dysfunctional family can fuck you up, but seriously I feel like Ruby was so lost in her thoughts that it annoyed me to the point of me could no longer read this tale of immaturity. Too bad, because Mei Ng's narration was great and flowing, but the story? It lacks of essence. Is it a tale about Ruby can't figure out herself? Well, the audience can't figure it out either...

Eating Chinese Food Naked A Novel

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