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	Monkey King : A Novel Patricia Chao, 1998 - 324 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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As we enter Sally's world, we meet a colorful array of characters: her grandmother Nai Nai, the aristocratic matriarch of the family; her parents, who are both marked by their immigrant experience; auntie Mabel and Uncle Richard, who love her like the daughter they never had; and Marty, Sally's beautiful sister, whose tough facade belies the frightened woman inside.

Sally's recovery takes place against a rich tapestry of culture and personality that unfolds before our eyes under the ghostly shadow of the Monkey King. For Sally has been living with a terrible family secret, and it is this burden that shattered her life. How she comes to terms with this betrayal and integrates her Chinese and American parts into a coherent personality are recounted with an honesty that is at once wry and refreshing. Monkey King is a stunning and memorable debut from a beautiful new writer.

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A captivating novel

I just finished Monkey King and I have to say it's one of the best and most original books I've ever read. Patricia Chao has an incredible talent of bringing the reader along on the protagonist's journey so that you feel like you're experiencing every emotion, sound and touch first-hand. I think this was particularly important since the protagonist, Sally, is an artist and her senses are naturally acute. I was impressed that Chao did not make Sally paralyzed by her depression. Rather, I perceived Sally as emotionally stunted by her childhood trauma, but through intense self-analysis was finally able to play "emotional catch-up." I also really appreciated how Chao captured Sally's hunger for parental approval, a theme that most people can identify with regardless of their age or station in life.

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Relationships between people

Monkey King was recommended to me by someone who had noticed that I liked memoir-style writing. Written in the first person, the novel explores the relationships that Sally, the protagonist, has with her mother, sister, grandmother, aunt and uncle, and of course, father. The portions of the book dealing with Sally's mental illness are very real, quite frightening, in fact. For some reason, the detail that Sally's handwriting became illegible as she slipped closer and closer to becoming completely unhinged really stuck with me. The relationships that Sally has with her family members are quite complex, as those things tend to be, I suppose, and the end of the novel offers no resolution, so I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who likes their ending nicely packaged. This is one of those books, I think, that affects its reader in slight, sneaky ways. Little bits come floating back to you now and then as you make your own way through life. As with any book that deals with difficult topics, it's not as easy to write a review. It wasn't a joyous read, or a "satisfying" one, per se, but compelling and well-crafted.

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Critiques the Monkey King Tradition

Readers of Journey to the West (a.k.a. Monkey) will find this book interesting for the way she subverts the popular Chinese literary figure in order to critique both Chinese and New England culture. The heroic characters of the Monkey tales are turned upside-down, suggesting the darker side of the tradition and its effects on women. Fans of Monkey and his colleagues may be upset by Chao's inversion of these characters, but for students of Asian America, the book presents an intriguing meditation on the effects of lingering Chinese patriarchy upon Chinese American women.

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artist, interrupted

At the start of "Monkey King," twentysomething graphic artist Sally Wang is sent to a psychiatric facility, after an aborted suicide attempt. Once there, she will continue the work begun in therapy: facing the incest that destroyed her youth and confronting her mother and sister about their denial, as her father has since passed on. Sally takes the reader back to her experience as a Chinese American daughter of immigrant parents, both of whom suffered culture shock on their arrival to the U.S. Helped by a sympathetic therapist, other family members and friends, Sally slowly puts her life back together.

The author brings alive what it is like to be a young Chinese American girl whose parents are struggling to assimilate. She also handles the topic of incest with tact and sensitivity. However, one thing that bothered me was the amount of compliments and praise showered on the heroine. The sister, who witnesses the abuse and feels overshadowed by Sally, complains about this, and I started to think she had a point. Given such abundance of love, Sally did begin to seem a bit self pitying after awhile. Also, the portrayal of being a mental patient seemed more like what would happen in the sixties than in today's insurance-conscious world.

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Well written, great characters, but what was the point?

Patricia Chao is a very accomplished teller of tales. Her prose is very vivid and senual -- smells and vistas and tactile sensations are everywhere. The characters she creates are memorable and vivid: the protagonist Sally, painter, American-Born Chinese, veteran of childhood trauma, and depressed person; her sister Marty, spoiled, full of life, beautiful; their mother, an immigrant, professor at Yale, well- meaning ice-queen, still strongly clinging to tradition, shaming Sally about her divorce, her career choice, her "feeling sorry for herself"; and the winsome, Uncle Richard, whose compassion, humor, and decision to include Sally in his betting at the dog track make us love him. There are great scenes, in the mental hospital, with her mother and sister. But ultimately, what is the point? Sally goes through her journey into the darkest night and seems hardly changed by it. She appears to have some revelation at the very end, but it comes from nowhere. Her depressive and self-loathing thoughts seem worse at the end than through most of the book. Yes, it is important to say that the struggle goes on, but there should be something learned or some knowledge gained. Have I just read the story of a thick-skulled person unwilling to change? It certainly seems so. ALSO -- Sally, and Patricia Chao -- are dishonest about mental illness in general and depression in specific. Sally and her friends' interaction with the hospital staff is all the same and featureless. Is no one helped by their medication? Does everyone have to have the same high school-type rebellion against the staff? Why are the grass and sky described with such specificity and detail but the medications (for all different disorders) are lumped together as "meds" that don't do much but make you dopey? Where are Prozac and Wellbutrin? Was this written about being in-patient in the '50s? Sadly, no. The result is a shame. There's so much talent here (in Chao) yet this kind of denial and stubborn unwillingness to confront all the realities of depression makes the book a partial truth (though filled with other resounding truths). Let's hope the author grows more than Sally did.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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