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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 VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST 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
“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 VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST 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
261 Reviews
3.0
Savannah
Created 5 days agoShare
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Moon ✨📖
Created 14 days agoShare
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“I stumbled upon this gem in a charming bookstore in Edinburgh, wrapped in lilac paper and beckoning me with its captivating description of a Chinese queer folklore story about a girl sporting a tiger tail. I knew I had to take it home! 🐅📚
Wow, did this book exceed my expectations! It’s an exhilarating journey through stunning prose that reads like poetry, compelling you to devour it in one breath. It’s chaotic, raw, and painfully complex, echoing the difficult childhoods many of us share but rarely look back at and label.
K-Ming Chang expertly navigates the themes of love, passion, and desire while grounding us in the harsh realities of generational trauma and misunderstanding. There’s so much depth to explore, and I found myself fully immersed in this magical world—one where the magic we hide under becomes a lifeline like. ✨💔
This is truly epic prose—chaotic realism meets mystic folklore. It’s at once painful and exhilarating to read, leaving you feeling almost euphoric.
So stunning!”
paige w
Created 20 days agoShare
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Selin
Created 24 days agoShare
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“very weird but such good storytelling!!”
About K-Ming Chang
K-Ming Chang was born in the year of the tiger. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a Lambda Literary Award finalist in poetry. Her poems have been anthologized in Ink Knows No Borders, Best New Poets 2018, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, the 2019 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and elsewhere. Raised in California, she now lives in New York.
Other books by K-Ming Chang
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