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.LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE &; &;Epic and intimate at once, Bestiary brings myth to visceral life. K-Ming Chang's talent exposes what is hidden inside us. She makes magic on the page.&;&;Julia Philips, author of Disappearing EarthOne 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
