Name: charisa's review of Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
Item: Bestiary
Rating: 3
Author: charisa

K-Ming Chang

A Novel

Bestiary

"One evening, Ma tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman's body, named Hu Gu Po. 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 leaves red on everything she touches; another aunt arrives with eels in her belly. All the while, Daughter is falling for her neighbor, a girl named Ben with mysterious 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 an old Taiwanese 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 magical realist aesthetic of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family's history from Mainland China to Taiwan, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and womanhood"--

Ang 

My father and brother carried the sky on their backs. They tilted toward each other, circling, and from the ground it might have looked like they were fighting or dancing. Kite- strings unraveled from their underbellies, descending like strands of spun silk. The strings dangled in the air, clear as braids of rain. My mother and I held out our hands and grasped them by the leash, angling our wrists to rhyme them with the wind, coaxing them toward the pecked-out sun, steering them where we couldn't follow

We both watched my father follow my brother as if tethered, yanked along, tied ankle-to- ankle by a kite-string. I grabbed at his ankle, but the weight of his want was too much for me.

She prays to the sisters whose names I don't know. Her prayers robbed of a god. 

Your grandmother's grief has grown its own body. She raises it like another child, one she loves better than me and my sister, one that can never leave her.

Somewhere, there was a name for our exchange, in a language that was kept from us.

tasha

'This is a powerful novel that will sit inside you for days after reading.' Sunday Times Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about 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. Her name was Hu Gu Po and she paid the price for her body in hunger. It's one of many stories Daughter absorbs from the women in her family, about gourd daughters, buried gold and rabbit moons. Soon afterwards, Daughter wakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her estranged grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with red hands and snakes in her belly; her brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighbourhood girl who is more bird than tiger and has mysterious stories of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother's letters and the myths that surround them, Daughter must reckon with how deep these stories are buried within her, and what power is rising, violently, through her. She will have to bring her family's secrets to light in order to change their destiny. 'To read K-Ming Chang is to see the world in fresh, surreal technicolor... Both wild and lyrical, visionary and touching. Read her!' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti ** LAMBDA LITERARY LESBIAN FICTION FINALIST**

taylor miles hopkins

Maga P

charisa

hoping this marks a (long-awaited) step back into reading after several weeks of stress-induced burnout!!! 

this was my first brush with k-ming chang, and her language is certainly something else: carnal, ever-shifting, layered and stripped astonishingly bare at the same time. bestiary is experimental in every sense, blending myth and modernity, bending language to fit mood and imagery with a total disregard for syntax rules. there were echoes of salt fish girl and chi ta-wei’s the membranes for sure (the weird-asian-female-fiction-subverting-gender-and-genre category is alive and well, apparently). 

speaking to the 3 star rating, i quite enjoyed the hotbed of literary chaos at some parts, but after a while, the blurriness felt overly disorienting and i felt totally buried in the metaphor. like, there was a plot, i think, but you really had to be looking for it. also, the focus on bodily crudeness was…..a choice lol. am i just being squeamish? can’t tell. after yu hua’s brothers, nothing can truly disgust me lmao

This is probably one of the strangest books I've ever read, in a good way - but not for the faint-hearted.

Poetic, highly surreal, visceral, violent, explicit about everything bodily, shocking, but also very funny at the same time. I think (but could be wrong) a lot of the often gruesome violence has its origins in the Tayan (Taiwan's indigenous people) myths that pervade the storytelling. 

Mario Menti 

This is probably one of the strangest books I've ever read, in a good way - but not for the faint-hearted.

Poetic, highly surreal, visceral, violent, explicit about everything bodily, shocking, but also very funny at the same time. I think (but could be wrong) a lot of the often gruesome violence has its origins in the Tayan (Taiwan's indigenous people) myths that pervade the storytelling. 

雪 xue

i liked it, then stopped liking it and was tempted to drop it, and then it grew on me again. wow! this was a metaphorical adventure, maddeningly poetic, and vulgar in the best way. ngl it was also a pain bc it took me a while to get through.
i had read k-ming chang’s work before and her figurative language is just astounding! i was in awe then and now. tbf i think some lines in this novel were overdone and came off as a bit cliche to me (~scholastic poetry vibes) but most of it was <3

Beautifully written—clever, aching, and wonderfully blunt. Reads like a long-form poem and is better to approach it with the acceptance that narrative details won’t be laid out clearly. With vagueness comes a lovely playfulness with language. Really loved the exploration of the chosen stories, the tendencies, and the uncontrollable effects lingering from the past that can be passed down through generations. 

jillian tenner

Poetry, pure poetry written in the form of a novel and, in the best way possible, I don’t understand all of it. I love it and want to re read it already. I want to make sense of every sentence. amazing

Sandaru Ravihari

I really struggled with this book not in the way of wanting to put down the book for good. do not get me wrong I enjoyed reading this book and I successfully finished it really contended. However, now looking back at the last few weeks of reading this, there were moments I just could not fathom some parts as Chang's descriptions are just mercilessly raw. She would start a normal sentence and ends it up in the most disgustingly adorable fashion. This type of language I have only seen on poems so far. The descriptions about piss, shit, saliva etc were overwhelming. At all times it felt like an exaggerated too much information scenario on the author's part. However, the story started to make sense by the last 1/3 of it. The book title itself being "Bestiary", we could not expect anything less than the imagery Chang has used. 

The use of Chinese folklore of Hu-Gu-Po the inspiration behind the tiger-human, Ge-gu: the myth of feeding your thigh meat to your sick parents, also the Crab stories and the "hole" that feeds on birdcages and goose meat and bringing back letters from Ama(the grandmother of the protagonist) all these details enhances the weirdness of this story to the maximum regardless this is a magical-realism book. I read this in June for the pride month. I just love Chang was able to write about the lesbian relationship and even about parental-daughter relationships in such a raw language.

Katie

This was not the book for me.

I was really drawn in to the idea of a debut novel centered around Taiwanese mythology. And K-Ming Chang's writing style certainly is magical--when she's not talking about certain bodily fluids, and excrement, that is.

I should have known from the first few pages to just drop it and not continue. The grotesque fixation on bodily functions, while I know it's a metaphor, never works for me. Not to mention K-Ming Chang's writing is so gorgeous. It would be so easy for her to write in a way that's more nuanced instead of so graphic and over-the-top. It reminded me quite a bit of Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang. I think if you like the style of Sour Heart, you will love Bestiary. Unfortunately, I wasn't big on either.

Here is an example.


  Before empires and before men and before my hips began barking at me to sit down, back when blood was sweet, we lived in houses underground. We dug into mountain soil that was so wet you could wring rivers from it. Our doors were holes. We came home by climbing down ladders. If home is beneath your feet, it means you're always home. We planted our shit in the ground to grow more mountains when we ran out.


Just look at how beautiful her writing is. Look at it!!! It is SO beautiful. And then you get to the last line, and it's so disorienting, and throws you right out of the book. And this KEEPS happening. From start to finish.

If this is the sort of style you like, I think you will have an amazing time, because as I've mentioned several times, K-Ming Chang's writing is so layered, metaphorical, and beautiful. But, if you're like me, and the above quotation throws you off, it might be best to pass on this one.

Diane Wang

Joyce

Mitz

Amelia Baumann

Gracie Marsden

yasi

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family's queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets. "Gorgeous and gorgeously grotesque . . . Every line of this sensuous, magical-realist marvel is utterly alive."--O: The Oprah Magazine FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD * LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine * NPR * The New York Public Library * Kirkus Reviews 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 afterward, 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 neighborhood 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. Praise for Bestiary "[A] vivid, fabulist debut . . . the prose is full of imagery. Chang's wild story of a family's tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations."--Publishers Weekly

mirza

marta

Catherine

Garrett Jansen

Erica Pisani

Kristin Chang

Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about 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. Her name was Hu Gu Po and she paid the price for her body in hunger. It's one of many stories Daughter absorbs from the women in her family, about gourd daughters, buried gold and rabbit moons. Soon afterwards, Daughter wakes with a tiger tail.And more mysterious events follow- holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her estranged grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with red hands and snakes in her belly; her brother tests the possibility of flight.All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighbourhood girl who is more bird than tiger and has mysterious stories of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother's letters and the myths that surround them, Daughter must reckon with how deep these stories are buried within her, and what power is rising, violently, through her. 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 magical realist aesthetic of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family's history from Taiwan to America, Bestiary is a lyrical and electrifying novel of migration, queer lineages and girlhood.

Maga P &
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

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