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Bestiary
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
15 posts | 9 read | 11 to read
Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this visceral, corporeal debut about one family's queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets. 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 afterwards, 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 mysterious 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.
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Kenyazero
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Bailedbailed

Bailing on a second #Roll100 pick this morning! I know before I started that I probably wouldn't finish this book. I don't enjoy this style of surreal, dark, pain and anger-stuffed books. I figured I would give it a try, though.

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honeydew_reader
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
Pickpick

An infinite well

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Bibliophibifemme
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Bestiary by K-Ming Chang is my hot tub vacation read. Already hooked by the prose which reads like myth and poe in an urban setting. Tells the stories of several generations of women, queer love, and controlling your own destiny.

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rachelsbrittain
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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First time in a bookshop in a year and a half

(Still masked, of course, and partially vaccinated.)

CaffeineAndCandy Yay 💜💜💜 4y
54 likes1 comment
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Bookalong
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Pickpick

Bestiary is an enthralling novel! It was beautifully bizarre and moving at the same time. A blending of family saga, mythology, diaspora, queerness, and coming of age story. It follows three generations of a Taiwanese American family who are plagued by the trauma of their immigration journey and the folklore of their homeland. #bookreview #bookstagram

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RebL
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Reading Log 2020 (Catching up)
~
in 2020, I wanted to read more mainstream global literature (as opposed to global lit for young people?), but gravitated to celebrity memoir.

TheNeverendingTBR The Cure ✅ 4y
RebL @TheNeverendingTBR Right?! Usually I'm underwhelmed by British rocker memoirs. How can they make salacious events so understated? This one took me back though. 4y
16 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Bookish_Gal
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Mehso-so

This is a tough review decision for me. It took me to the end to understand what I was reading. I have trouble with analogies, which I believe is what made it a difficult read
This is a story about three generations of women; daughter to mother to grandmother- that focused on how they‘re lives were affected by their married lives. Specifically the mothers. How secrets between them all created holes in the yard, their lives
It‘s a good debut novel

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Bookish_Gal
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang

Never sleep with your mouth open or a man will slide in, just like a snake, and beach in your bowels until you belong to him. The only man you should marry is the moon, she said, so you can divorce it every morning.

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Bookish_Gal
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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This is an easier read than I thought it was going to be. I am having trouble understanding some of the symbolism - maybe like 1:3 - but the story itself is starting to pick up. As such, I‘m not sure how I really feel about this book yet

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Bookish_Gal
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Interesting ways to tell stories. Mother to daughter. Through stories from generations of mothers.
Sometimes I have trouble understanding them, making sense of them. It‘s difficult for me to figure how much of this book is a way of telling a real life story versus just a fictional story lesson

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mdemanatee
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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This book is full of phrases you want to sit with for a moment.

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mdemanatee
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Really enjoying this one so far but work has been taking up most of my time and leaving me exhausted so am not getting as much reading done as I want.

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mdemanatee
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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I was...not able to stay away from the bookstore.

CaffeineAndCandy ɢᴏᴏᴅ ғᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ 👍 4y
23 likes1 comment
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ReadingEnvy
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Pickpick

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang follows three generations of Taiwanese-American women. The author describes it as "part migration story, part mythological retelling,, part queer love story." The daughter grows a tiger tail and she must uncover her family's history to understand the source of the tail, and along the way she falls in love. Among many strangenesses, there are holes in the back yard that spit out letters from her estranged grandmother.⤵️

ReadingEnvy If I can compare this book to anything, it felt similar in voice to The Discomfort of Evening (which just won the International Booker so that's no light praise) because of the world of the children but the story has more complexity due to the multiple generations and the Hu Gu Po (tiger spirit). You can tell the author is a poet in all the writing but especially in the letters from the grandmother. 4y
38 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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vlwelser
Bestiary: A Novel | K-Ming Chang
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Pickpick

This has to be one of the strangest things I have ever read. But it's also beautiful. At times it reads like poetry. At others it's like a string of folk tales. I loved it.

#BookSpinBingo square 13

I received an #ARC from #OneWorld via #Netgalley
Pub date is 9/8/2020