Bluestockings: Women’s studies Book Club – Mona in the Promised Land – April 26

Leatherby Libraries and the
Women’s Studies Minor Program
of
Wilkinson College
continue the Bluestockings: Women’s studies Book Club series on
Friday, April 26, 2013
at 1 p.m. in the Leatherby Libraries room 305.

The discussion will be, Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen

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.