Ng, Mei. Eating Chinese Food Naked
This debut novel shows stunning promise for Mei Ng and portrays the witty, poignant, and complex relationship between a mother and a daughter, and the daughter's reluctant return from college to a family she once could not wait to leave.
Reminiscent of both Amy Tan's novels and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Ng strikes out of previous generations of Asian American writers and creates her own quirky, funny, angst-riddled protagonist, Ruby Lee.
The dexterous descriptions of everyday life at Lee's Laundry, the strangled relationships of Ruby's family members, her controlling father, her stoic mother, and her vision of her own and others sexuality pulse throughout the book and create a richly detailed palette to which Ruby reacts and rearranges her life. Her portrayal of the art of preparing, presenting, and eating Chinese food will remind the reader of M.F.K. Fisher's metaphor-laden tales revolving around the deeply sensual aspects of culturally and socially creating and sharing food.
Ng's prose is melodic but accurate, lush yet spare as she explains the cross-cultural relationships with great skill and presents Ruby Lee's confusion and fascination about her own sexuality, her dissection of her parents' puzzling relationship, and her own nebulous future.
This novel is about once Gen-Xer and her multicultural gender and identity crisis, as well as an ode to mother/daughter love; however, it is also a brilliant first effort and a heady description of the road everyone with family travels to understand where they came from and where they will go.
Leane M. Ellis, March 3, 1998.
Lucius Beebe Memorial Library - This page last updated 3/04/98 - lme.