Mona in the Promised Land : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Mona needed to have a reality check.
Review: After starting this book and putting it down in three years, I finally am able to give it three stars. I found it very hard to get into this book and want to continue to read it. If it hadn't been for a snow storm I may never have gotten around to finishing it.

While Mona Chang is a wise cracking character throughout the book, her mother is the true comedian. Her character kept me laughing and often thinking about one of the mothers from the book the "Joy Luck Club." Her level of sarcasm was unbeatable.

When Mona's sister embraces their culture Mona finds her odd. Yet she doesn't think anything of embracing the culture of her friend. It was almost painful to read when Mona dines with her WASP friend and family.

One of the reasons I was not a huge fan of this book, was due to Mona's constant need to be Jewish. I don't know why it just didn't appeal to me for this character. She fought against her own heritage to the point that she actually became a rude character that just didn't seem to get it. It being what her parents had worked for and struggled for. They were people that were proud to be American. Mona on the other hand found a love interest and a friend that spent too much time looking for the injustice in life. Mona's parents become frustrated with her for good reason.

The Underground Railroad section was definitely a grasping at straws moment. Later when Seth and Mona struggle in their relationship I found the "jumping" section a bit dramatic. Especially for the reasoning behind Seth's need for attention.

Although it is easy to find fault with this book, it is also a book that in the end I am glad I read. Mona is a character that you will not soon forget.

Rating:
Summary: Mona needed to have a reality check.
Review: After starting this book and putting it down in three years, I finally am able to give it three stars. I found it very hard to get into this book and want to continue to read it. If it hadn't been for a snow storm I may never have gotten around to finishing it.

While Mona Chang is a wise cracking character throughout the book, her mother is the true comedian. Her character kept me laughing and often thinking about one of the mothers from the book the "Joy Luck Club." Her level of sarcasm was unbeatable.

When Mona's sister embraces their culture Mona finds her odd. Yet she doesn't think anything of embracing the culture of her friend. It was almost painful to read when Mona dines with her WASP friend and family.

One of the reasons I was not a huge fan of this book, was due to Mona's constant need to be Jewish. I don't know why it just didn't appeal to me for this character. She fought against her own heritage to the point that she actually became a rude character that just didn't seem to get it. It being what her parents had worked for and struggled for. They were people that were proud to be American. Mona on the other hand found a love interest and a friend that spent too much time looking for the injustice in life. Mona's parents become frustrated with her for good reason.

The Underground Railroad section was definitely a grasping at straws moment. Later when Seth and Mona struggle in their relationship I found the "jumping" section a bit dramatic. Especially for the reasoning behind Seth's need for attention.

Although it is easy to find fault with this book, it is also a book that in the end I am glad I read. Mona is a character that you will not soon forget.

Rating:
Summary: A touch of magical realism in Jen's second novel.
Review: Gish Jen's second novel has the quality of magical realism,but retains a firm grounding in reality. Her title character,Mona Chang, shifts in and out of her multiple identities-- Chinese, Jewish, American. While Jen's first novel--_Typical American_--also explored America's varied identities in terms of clashing cultures and the immigrant experience through humor, _Mona in the Promised Land_ is more lighthearted though still a substantial book. _Mona_ is a book of the second-generation Asian-American. The only grouse I have is the sentimental way in which Jen tends to end her novels, and this a fault more evident in her second book. Nonetheless, I look forward to her future works. She's a worthy successor of the older generation of writers like Maxine Hong Kingston

Rating:
Summary: Great American Novel?
Review: I read the book jacket and was intrigued by the premise--a Jewish Chinese American girl. That alone stirs up many thought-provoking issues, like how an Asian American girl attempts to find her identity, or the similarities between Jewish and Asian Americans. That alone would have been enough. The problem is that Jen adds a lot more to her plot. A little too much maybe. On top of the Asian American issues, you've got your 70's zeitgeist, black American issues, hippies living in teepees, and generation gaps. It almost seems like Jen is making a bold attempt to create the Great American Novel--encompassing each and every ingredient of the Salad Bowl, aka America. But the book is so all-encompassing that Jen hardly gets truly in-depth into anything. The Jewish Asian girl premise is lost within the first fifty pages, and maintained periodically by half-heartedly throwing in a few Yiddish phrases through the rest of the novel. Because of it's broadness, this book does not bring up as many Asian American issues as one would hope. It's a worthy competitor for the Great American Novel title, but unfortunately, Jen isn't much of an established writer outside of the Asian American literture realm for her book to be considered for the GAN pool.

Rating:
Summary: good book until epilogue
Review: I thought this was one of the best book that I have read lately-- until the epilogue. "Mona in the Promised Land" is unlike most multicultural books that I have read. This book actually addresses the idea of assimilating into American society. Most books set in this motif side-step this issue. For this reason I really enjoyed the book. Furthermore, I found the descriptions of the characters in the book accurate. I attend a high school where half the students are Jewish and another twenty percent are Asian. Based on my experiences, Gish Jen correctly describes the intermingling and tension that can exist between different ethnic/religious groups. Even though I have only praised this book, I was extremely dissapointed with the epilogue. After finishing the book I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. The epilogue reminds my of an episode of a tv sitcom where everything works out in the end. This is a departure from the realistic nature that Jen conveys through the rest of the novel. My suggestion-- don't read the epilogue and you will really enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe two-and-a-half stars
Review: I was tempted to give this book 3 stars, but couldn't bring myself to do it. Gish Jen is really a fantastic writer who can carve meaning out of detail as well as anyone else pumping out fiction today. And that's almost good enough.

In Mona Chang, Jen creates a funny, wise-cracking Asian-American woman confused by the dizzying cultural contradictions that surround her. Bad enough that her own country - the US, folks - stereotypes and denigrates her; the real problem is her parents, Chinese immigrants who want their daughter to be Chinese without being *too* Chinese - independent and obedient in the same heartbeat. Mona proceeds to find herself by experiencing the entire spectrum of the so-called "melting pot," and in doing so unearths discrimination - spiritual, financial and racial - under every rock, including those in her parents' own yard.

Reviewers have remarked that this book sheds new light on race relations in America. Jen's primary achievement, however, is in demonstrating the equivalence between the battles for financial, racial and spiritual liberation. She puts inclusionism - or "cafeteria racism" - to a scathing acid test: most of her characters are so bitterly wrapped up in their own quest for social liberation that they don't notice the common cause they share with the people they profess to despise. MONA is also illuminating for whites who have never experienced racism, who wonder how asking an Asian-American "Where are you *really* from?" could possibly be insulting, or why a group of militant African-American men would revolt when a young white girl accuses them en masse of thievery.

Unfortunately, the book bogs down in several places, most notably near the middle where Mona, Barbara and Seth futz around in the "Underground Railroad". Worst of all, the ending is completely botched. Everything said by any of the characters in the last 30 pages has the stilted air of moral finality; characters seem to reappear out of thin air, under flimsy pretexts. And, of course, there's the infamous epilogue, which substitutes the complexity and bitterness experienced throughout the book with a well-telegraphed, made-for-Hollywood five-hankie affair that makes you blink and scream, "What the hell was that??"

Despite its flaws, this is still an important book. Any time you find a voice this crisp and witty, it should be held on high as a standard for aspiring writers. Read it, and take the last thirty pages with a grain of salt.

Rating:
Summary: A really entertaining read-- stick with it!
Review: MONA IN THE PROMISED LAND is both an entertaining, funny read and a interesting meditation on race and its constructs in America at the same time. The characters are well developed (even the slightly characaturish Helen, who seems tyrannically traditional at first) and the style of the book is warm, funny and analytical at the same time. Many readers may find the book hard to get into at first, the narrative style is a little haphazard, with run on sentences following each other and circumlocutious prose. But after 40 or 50 pages, the book definitely becomes worth it. Keep in mind that Jen is doing more than just writing a story in this novel, she's analyzing race in America, no easy feat.

Rating:
Summary: Very well-rounded, and a lot of fun to boot!
Review: Other critics in this space have commented on the more serious aspects of this novel as an immigrant novel; if you want an immigrant novel, I suggest Jen's prior work, "Typical American," a book about Mona's family one generation before. If, on the other hand, you're interested in the new American bildungsroman, you're in the right place.

I picked up this book in a traditional bookstore and opened to a chapter following a frightening event Mona decides to hide from her parents. Mona's fright after and decision to hide her near-rape as a teenager is compared lyrically to a time when, as a small girl, Mona tried to dry a doll's dress over a gas burner and it caught on fire. The description of the doll dress shrivelling and flaming in the kitchen sink was enough to make me buy the book; the juxtaposition of these scenes when reading the book through quite impressed me. Jen's flawless transition and subtle use of metaphor throughout the novel make this a classic American novel.

The book taken from an objective standpoint does seem a little unbelievable from time to time. However, Jen has depicted Mona so sympathetically that we are drawn in and follow her willingly through her romps, and her friends' romps, that we will believe anything as long as it follows with her character.

Finally, Jen capably follows Mona over several years, even foreshadowing ten and fifteen years in the future, without destroying the suspense of the book. By the time we're done reading, we believe that Mona has managed to grow up with herself, holding true to her family, her Chinese heritage, and her Jewish affiliation, after all.

Rating:
Summary: Oy, what's with the epilogue?
Review: Other critics in this space have commented on the more serious aspects of this novel as an immigrant novel; if you want an immigrant novel, I suggest Jen's prior work, "Typical American," a book about Mona's family one generation before. If, on the other hand, you're interested in the new American bildungsroman, you're in the right place.

I picked up this book in a traditional bookstore and opened to a chapter following a frightening event Mona decides to hide from her parents. Mona's fright after and decision to hide her near-rape as a teenager is compared lyrically to a time when, as a small girl, Mona tried to dry a doll's dress over a gas burner and it caught on fire. The description of the doll dress shrivelling and flaming in the kitchen sink was enough to make me buy the book; the juxtaposition of these scenes when reading the book through quite impressed me. Jen's flawless transition and subtle use of metaphor throughout the novel make this a classic American novel.

The book taken from an objective standpoint does seem a little unbelievable from time to time. However, Jen has depicted Mona so sympathetically that we are drawn in and follow her willingly through her romps, and her friends' romps, that we will believe anything as long as it follows with her character.

Finally, Jen capably follows Mona over several years, even foreshadowing ten and fifteen years in the future, without destroying the suspense of the book. By the time we're done reading, we believe that Mona has managed to grow up with herself, holding true to her family, her Chinese heritage, and her Jewish affiliation, after all.

Rating:
Summary: Mona wants to be something other than Asian Promised Land
Review: There was something that's fatally lacking in this novel by Gish JEN if it was meant to be a satire of American life instead of describing a moral tale of some minority young female's desperate effort to be just WHATEVER WHITE. I admit that this author is full of technich, observation and most importantly, starategy. However, this moral tale of a Chinese American young woman's struggle to become a JEW appeared rather grotesque than clever or funny. The important question this author failed to ask/answer in this story was why Jewish was pick by her to turn into conveniently instead of anything else? If it were not for white dominant society where nobody wants to act a role of being minority, what is it about? That nonsense that is full of awareness and strategy (Jen obviously wrote this with full of consciousness instead of completing it mindlessly) would make readers tearful and sick after all. This author carefully avoids the argument and cunningly even set a rehearsal of changing identity by the description of Mona's encounter with Japanese boy, Shaman who she failed to demonstrate the ASSIMILATINON process in the US life( which might be getting intimate with him and becoming SOMETHING WHITE TOGETHER ) because of this boy's stubborn refusal of the notion of her changing identity as well as his own. And it seems the excuse of the author to let MONA turn into whatever white instead of a search for her own vocabulary to establish her own identity, as if MONA could say later'SEE, there is no place for Asian American in Asian-Asian community' because of the experience with Shaman. Even if so, Mona should know that the more she tries to be something else, the moer she fails.