Eating Chinese Food Naked

"When Ruby was a kid, around the time when other little girls were being dandled on their daddys knee... and thinking about marrying him when they grew up, she was dreaming about marrying her mother and taking her away." Right off the bat Mei Ngs novel promises to be different from the run-of-the-mill mother-daughter saga so beloved of young, female first novelists of every ethnic persuasion. Ruby Lee, the heroine of Eating Chinese Food Naked, has just graduated from college and come back home to live with her parents over the familys laundry business. Her parents, Bell and Franklin, are hardly a match made in heaven, and for all of her life Ruby has been her mothers defender--a role she cant give up even as she longs to be free of it. During the course of her summer at home, Ruby must navigate the choppy waters of familial relations--her mother and fathers estrangement, her irresponsible older brothers volatile relationship with everyone, her sisters recent marriage to a non-Chinese--as well as sort out her own feelings about Nick, a young man whom she loves but cannot seem to remain faithful to. Ngs melancholy novel perfectly captures her heroines dislocation both within her family and within herself, at the same time offering readers a glimpse of the urban Chinese American experience across two generations. --Margaret Prior

Categories: Nutrition & Food