She reinvents the genres of immigrant novel, queer coming-of-age story, and mother-and-daughter tale at every level, from the use of myth to the reinvention of language, mixing dialects and Chinese characters with English. And the appearance of a tiger tail on a girl is just one of the many surreal and poetic touches Chang uses to characterize her Taiwanese characters’ experiences as immigrants in the United States.Ĭhang’s novel is like no other I have ever read. “A week before I woke with a tail, my mother was outside in the front yard, arguing with the new neighbor about his encroaching eucalyptus tree,” explains the unnamed daughter in K-Ming Chang’s bold and brilliant first novel, “Bestiary.” The daughter’s tail is the physical manifestation of her having been born in the Year of the Tiger as well as the tiger spirit, Hu Gu Po, that runs through the women in her family.
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