Mona in the Promised Land: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

"Both hilariously funny and seriously important." --Amy Tan

"A shining example of a multicultural message delivered with the wit and bite of art. . . . Gish Jen creates a particular world where dim sum is as American as apple pie." --Los Angeles Times

"Hopeful and smart, a rare combination." --The New York Times Book Review

"Hilarious and dazzling. . . . This firmly plotted novel has a raucous good time." --The Boston Globe

"Funny, headlong and completely delightful. . . . A light-hearted novel of radiant charm and human warmth." --Cynthia Ozick

In this ebullient and inventive novel, Gish Jen restores multiculturalism from high concept to a fact of life. At least that's what it becomes for teenaged Mona Chang, who in 1968 moves with her newly prosperous family to Scarshill, New York, where the Chinese have become "the new Jews." What could be more natural than for Mona to take this literally--even to the point of converting? As Mona attends temple "rap" sessions and falls in love (with a nice Jewish boy who lives in a tepee), Jen introduces us to one of the most charming and sweet-spirited heroines in recent fiction, a girl who can wisecrack with perfect aplomb even when she's organizing the help in her father's pancake house. On every page of Mona in the Promised Land, Gish Jen sets our received notions spinning with a wit as dry as a latter-day Jane Austen's.
"A shining example of a multicultural message delivered with the wit and bite of art...Gish Jen creates a particular world where dim sum is as American as apple pie."--Los Angeles Times