Mona in the Promised Land - Hardcover

Jen, Gish

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679445897 ISBN 13: 9780679445890

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

In 1968, the Chang family moves to posh Scarshill, New York, where the rhodendrons are as big as the Chang family's old bathroom, and nobody trims the forsythia into little can shapes. This takes some getting used to--especially since there's also a new social landscape, with a hot line, a mystery caller, and a temple youth group full of radical ideas. From the author of Typical American.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Chang family moves to posh Scarshill, New York, where the rhodendrons are as big as the Chang family's old bathroom, and nobody trims the forsythia into little can shapes. This takes some getting used to--especially since there's also a new social landscape, with a hot line, a mystery caller, and a temple youth group full of radical ideas. From the author of Typical American.

Reviews

``American means being whatever you want,'' the intensely bright and high-spirited protagonist of Jen's second novel (after Typical American, 1991) declares to her mother early in the narrative, and this droll, moving work presents an unsparing analysis of the allure and tolls of that freedom. Mona Chang offers a first-person record of her life from 1968, when she is in the eighth grade, to adulthood. She is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Helen and Ralph, who have worked determinedly to discard the more obvious habits and tastes that might mark them as being too foreign; they have even (grudgingly) accepted that Mona and her sister Callie will inevitably lead lives far removed from most Chinese traditions. Grasping just how far, though, is the problem: Mona, feeling increasingly unmoored when her parents move to wealthy Scarshill, New York, believing that she needs to belong to a minority prouder of its identity and traditions, decides to convert to Judaism. Her decision unnerves not only her parents but the wider community, yet she stubbornly perseveres in the first of several rebellions. Woven through Mona's often witty narrative of her adolescence, of her struggles both to fit in and to stand apart, of her first hesitant experience of passion, is her determination to live outside both the expectations of her parents and the blithe stereotypes of society. Jen, who misses little, renders the status-laden particulars of life in Scarshill with the specificity of an anthropologist, and she catches the enthusiasms and prejudices of the 1960s and '70s with a documentary-like zeal. Mona describes all of this in a voice that is earthy, vivid, and convincing. In tracing the (guardedly triumphant) struggles of one young woman to be herself, borrowing from a variety of traditions without being constrained by any of them, Jen gives us an affecting story- -precise, often very funny--and a wonderfully idiosyncratic heroine. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The rich stew of ethnic differences in America's melting pot provides robust fare in Jen's wickedly and hilariously observant second novel. In chronicling the coming-of-age of a refreshingly un-neurotic Chinese-American teenager, Jen casts an ironic eye on some of the hypocrisies of contemporary society, and her amusing insights illuminate several minority cultures. Mona Chang is in eighth grade in the late 1960s when her family moves to Scarshill, an affluent, mainly Jewish suburb of New York City. Her parents, upwardly mobile Helen and Ralph Chang, met in Jen's acclaimed first novel, Typical American. Smart, wisecracking Mona soon comes to the conclusion that "if you want to know how to be a minority, there's nobody better at it than the Jews," and she approves of Judaism's intellectual latitude and social activism. "American means being whatever you want, and I happened to pick being Jewish," Mona says. Her parents are appalled; by claiming the freedom to choose, Mona is violating what Jen presents as one of the basic rules of Chinese parent-child relationships. But being a "solo Jew" is only one of Mona's problems as she navigates the difficult shoals of adolescence as an ethnic and religious maverick as bewildered as any teenager by the mysteries of love and sex. Her tentative romances with a Japanese student and with a Jewish pseudointellectual dropout are also complicated by social idealism. When Mona and her boyfriend decide to move the black cook at the Changs' pancake restaurant into her best friend Barbara Guglestein's imposing house, the results are predictably droll. Jen matches intelligence with affectionate wit, narrative skill with firm knowledge of human nature.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this exuberant if overly long novel, Jen continues the story of the Chang family, which she began in Typical American (1991). This time, the focus is on Ralph and Helen's brash teenager, Mona. The success of their pancake restaurant has enabled the Changs to move to "the promised land" : Scarshill, New York, circa 1968. Drawn by the good schools and the majestic landscaping, the Changs are unprepared to deal with their daughter's attempts to assimilate into the community, namely, her decision to convert to Judaism. As Mona takes instruction from an unconventional rabbi, participates in rap sessions with her fellow temple-goers, and has her first sexual encounter with a smart, politically active college dropout, the Changs are at first bemused and then thunderstruck by their daughter's un-Chinese-like behavior. Still, as revealed in the tender epilogue, all ends well--the Changs reconcile at Mona's wedding, and Mona contemplates the notion of having her husband-to-be change his name to Changowitz. A funny, warmhearted coming-of-age tale. Joanne Wilkinson

Helen and Ralph Chang of Typical American fame (LJ 2/15/91) have moved up the American dream ladder as owners of a thriving pancake house and, in 1968, when younger daughter Mona enters high school, of a house in wealthy, suburban Scarshill (read Scarsdale), New York. But the times are fraught with change?not just the rebellion of U.S.-born Mona against the warnings and ways of her immigrant parents ("make sure," caution the elders repeatedly), but the rebellion of an entire generation against the ways of its parents. Over the next few years, with best friend Barbara Gugelstein and boyfriend Seth Mandel, Mona embraces Judaism (the religion of many of Scarshill's residents), confronts racism against blacks and others, espouses various causes, argues about socialism and other isms, and experiences sex and drugs. Ultimately, her actions prove too much for her mother, who turns her back on Mona, saying "Is this my daughter?" Jen's hilarious rendering, and rending, of an era is so accurate that it becomes real even for those who weren't there. She evenhandedly skewers all groups, from Jewish to black to WASP to Chinese to Japanese, reminding each of the shared histories that separate them. A brilliantly clever, worthy successor to her first novel.?Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679445897
• ISBN 13: 9780679445890
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 303