Tagged with Asian-American

Did you know it's easier to be transsexual in Iran than homosexual? According to the novel and Wikipedia, the only country in the world that does more sex reassigngment surgeries than Iran is Thailand, and many of the surgeries are subsidized by the government. Being born the wrong gender is an ailment, being queer is a sinful aberration. So that's what our heroine Sahar is dealing with as her best friend, who she has wanted to marry since the girls were six years old, gets engaged to a dude.

You may recall that I was enthusiastic about Min's first memoir, Red Azalea and her novel Wild Ginger. I expected to like Cooked Seed twice as hard. It starts more or less where Azalea leaves off--at Min's emigration to the US. Somehow, even after the stories of Cultural Revolution privations, cruelties and humiliations in the first part, Seed is harder to take. I guess because you can blame Min's problems on her, or maybe because you have to blame some of her problems on the United States.

Following Legend, Prodigy is a tale of a divided, dystopic America, from the perspective of the commie side's two most notorious outlaws, both fifteen. They discover that the corporate side is no heaven either, nor is the resistance of the former that they've been drawn into supporting.

Twenty five Muslim women, most of them pretty observant, many of them converts, share their love stories. To a heathen like me the mystery of these women's lives isn't Islam; it's their devotion to it. Maybe I was expecting some secular Muslim contributions, but that was probably dumb. Anyway, the women's tales are heartfelt and straightforward. Surprises include the two chapters written by lesbians and the matter-of-fact and reasonable sounding appeal of polygyny.