Feminist Reading Group

For our Feminist Reading Group September meet, we're discussing the contemporary Chinese-American classic Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin!

Moonie and Mei Ling are looked after by their grandmother, an indomitable matriarch, ruthless manager of 'The Double Happiness' restaurant and fount of endless titbits of Chinese mythology. Feared and renowned in the neighbourhood - and stubbornly attached to the giant meat cleaver she keeps in her handbag - eccentric Grandma Wong weaves a magical world of surreal stories and ancient wisdom around her two wayward granddaughters.

However, the girls' lives are also being drawn forward by the inexorable pace of assimilation and the ever-beckoning American dream, and as fascinated as they might be by Buddhist philosophy, they are also cool, hip American girls with straight-A grades and scores to settle - with the neighbourhood boys who tease them and with the unforgiving media, which tells them that they should look like Barbie dolls and not like Chinese girls.

“The poet Marilyn Chin’s first novel is a nicely mischievous cacophony of ornery backchat: satirical, political and violent. Drawing on ancient Chinese lore and contemporary Americana.” -The Guardian