Mona in the Promised Land

By Gish Jen

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Mona in the Promised Land is a 1996 novel by the American writer Gish Jen, a comic coming-of-age story that continues the story of the Chang family from her debut, Typical American. In the late 1960s, teenage Mona Chang moves with her Chinese immigrant parents to the affluent, largely Jewish suburb of Scarshill, New York, and decides to convert to Judaism, setting off a series of cultural and generational clashes that explore identity, assimilation and what it means to choose who you are in America.

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• Margaret Atwood: “A lot of books, but right now Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land. Generational and cultural conflict with 1,000 twists!”