tradition, modernism, war, violence, colonialism,
race, religion, sex and gender.
Sukanya B. SenapatiMona in the Promised Land
Gish Jen (1996)
GISH JEN’s second novel continues the story of the
Chang family from TYPICAL AMERICAN, but this
time through the narration of Ralph and Helen’s
daughter, Mona. Set in a fictional, Jewish New York
suburb called Scarshill in the late 1960s and early
1970s, the story focuses on teenager Mona’s con-
version to Judaism because, she tells us, “American
means being whatever you want, and I happen to
pick being Jewish.”
While Mona diligently studies Judaism and
the Torah despite her mother’s disapproving eyes,
her sister, Callie, immerses herself in studying her
Chinese heritage and the Mandarin language at
college. Jen weaves a tumultuous path for both
girls. Callie causes a rift with her parents when she
abandons her American name for a Chinese name
(Kailan), and begins to act, dress, and eat more
“Chinese-like” than they ever have. At the end of
the novel, however, both girls symbolically return
home for a family reunion and Mona’s wedding to
a Jewish American named Seth. On the wedding
day, Mona decides that she, Seth, and their young
daughter Io, will change their family name to
‘Changowitz’ to mark their Chinese-Jewish iden-
tity. This juxtaposition between Mona’s cross-cul-
tural and supposedly more mainstream path and
Callie’s “ethnic” path underscores questions about
individuals’ ability to choose cultural identity, and
the resulting questions about authenticity, ho-
mogenization and assimilation. Jen is careful to
show that neither girl thinks of identity as a cloak
or fad that one can superficially change at whim;
both girls extensively educate themselves about
their chosen ‘identities.’
In interviews, Jen frequently defines American-
ness as “a preoccupation with identity.” In a 1998
interview with Asian Week, Jen explains how her
view of identity is different from the “very West-
ern view in which somehow you need to resolve
the tension between two things, to want things to
come to a kind of conclusion.” Instead, Jen believes
in the idea of “fluidity”: just like the idea of yin
and yang, sour and sweet, “Opposites don’t fight
each other, but belong together and intensify each
other, and are simply in the nature of the world”
(Shiroishi). Mona in the Promised Land fulfills this
vision as Mona struggles with what it means to
be Chinese, American and Jewish, all at the same
time. The novel is a coming-of-age story that poi-
gnantly addresses how the convergence of multiple
identities complicates adolescence and maturity.Bibliography
Gonzalez, Begoña Simal. “The (Re)Birth of Mona
Changowitz: Rituals and Ceremonies of Cultural
Conversion and Self-making in Mona in the Prom-
ised Land.” MELUS 26, no. 2 (2001): 225–242.
Lin, Erika T. “Mona on the Phone: The Performative
Body and Racial Identity in Mona in the Promised
Land.” MELUS 28, no. 2 (2003): 47–57.
Partridge, Jeffrey F. “Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised
Land.” Vol. 2, American Writers: Classics, edited by
Jay Parini, 215–232. New York: Scribner’s, 2004.
Shiroishi, Julie. “American as Apple Pie,” 27 Sep-
tember 1996, AsianWeek. Available online. URL:
http://www.asianweek.com/092796/cover.html.
Accessed October 9, 2006.
Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “But What in the World Is
an Asian American? Culture, Class and Invented
Traditions in Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised
Land.” EurAmerica: A Journal of European and
American Studies 32, no. 4 (2002): 641–674.
Amy Lillian ManningMoon Pearl, The
Ruthanne Lum McCunn (2000)
By weaving together history, legends, myths, and
songs, RUTHANNE LUM MCCUNN’s imaginary tale
offers a fictional account of the beginning of
the self-combers (sze saw) movement in China
in the 19th century. In Strongworm, a village in
the Sun Duk district of China’s Pearl River Delta
region, three girls, Mei Ju, Rooster, and Shadow,
become close friends at a girls’ house where they19 8 Mona in the Promised Land