THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9607010175
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LENORE HART
LENGTH: 71 lines
MONA IN THE PROMISED LAND
GISH JEN
Alfred A. Knopf. 304 pp. $24.
The high school years are trying: unpopularity, SAT exams, raging hormones, other horrors physical and spiritual. Perhaps toughest is the search for self - melting family ties to forge the individual.
Gish Jen looks at the process somewhat differently in Mona in the Promised Land.'' Mona Chang is a Chinese-American teenager transplanted to the affluent, liberal New York suburb of Scarshill. It's 1968, year of antiwar activism, civil rights marches, student strikes, and of course, Aquarius. Against this background, a coolly wisecracking but utterly confused Mona tries to sort out her relentlessly impending adulthood.
The author introduced Mona's parents, Helen and Ralph, in her previous novel, Typical American. The Changs embody the values of China as they recall it: work hard, act modest, ask no questions. They've succeeded in the pancake house business, are even comtemplating expansion. Suspicious of outsiders (most people fall into this category) they alternately bully and cajole their daughters to squeeze into the mold of ``good Chinese girl.'' Older sister Callie comes close. But Mona, the favorite, rebels. She decides to define herself by becoming Jewish.
Her father takes it philosophically. Her mother's aghast: ``I think I'm very Westernized. I brought you children up without you even speak Chinese.'' Her daughter was supposed to become ``American, not Jewish.'' Mona retorts, ``American means being whatever you want, and I happened to pick being Jewish.''
Known in Temple Youth Group as The Changowitz, she works hard at her adopted religion: studies for confirmation, staffs the Hotline, plays the guitar. In the liberal tradition, she wants to immerse herself in a Cause. When Alfred, a cook at the pancake house, loses his girlfriend and needs a place to stay, Mona decides on race relations. She generously offers the home of her friend, Barbara, whose parents are conveniently away. There's even an old tunnel so Alfred can avoid the neighbors. Mona figures no problem. Her motivation is the belief that her parents (who should know better!) seem prejudiced against their black employees. What better revenge than a modern Underground Railroad?
Other characters also switch roles. Mona's first love, shy Sherman Matsumoto, rejects her in junior high with a judo flip and this enigmatic complaint: ``You will never be Japanese.'' Years later, he rings up the Hotline . . . or is it one of the Jewish guys posing as Sherman? For Mona's story is crammed with the weird things we do as teenagers, on the phone and in person. And the traumas - peer rejection, pregnancy scares, unrequited love, being kicked out of the house.
Jen is good at evoking voices - Long Island Jewish Princess, Chinese American Immigrant, Boastful Black/White Guy. You can hear the inflections in your head. She's less successful at pulling off humorous passages, which tend to go on and on. Occasionally turns of phrase sound more like present day slang. And though the book's set at the peak of the 60s, there's little sense of place. Jen concentrates on inner landscapes, and is miserly with background details like fashions, protests, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The result is a sporadic lack of vividness, a curious floating sensation, as if the story might be unfolding any old place and time.
Still, Mona is delightful. It's about identity: finding it, claiming it, keeping or changing it. Remarkably, Jen's characters are basically good, though imperfect. All misstep - sometimes badly. Then they're sorry, even ashamed, and make amends. Jen doesn't create superficial nostalgia for an imperfect time, nor summon despair over those imperfections. She leaves instead a feeling that's rare these days, on closing a book: hope. MEMO: Lenore Hart, the author of ``Black River,'' lives on the Eastern
Shore. Her second novel, ``Ibo Key,'' will be published later this year. by CNB