Melanie Ho
Melanie Ho is a writer who has reviewed for publications in Hong Kong and Canada.
Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin
MELANIE HO | 18 August 2010Mid-way through MARILYN CHIN's first novel, REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN, the terrifying Grandma Wong (also known as the Great Matriarch) tells one her twin granddaughters the story of her conception. Grandma Wong ends her tale, which includes an electronics factory and magic bamboo tweezers, with: "I know that this story sounds very strange to you. But all family stories are indeed strange. You'll get used to that."
MELANIE HO | 05 July 2010As a Chinese-Canadian and sometime writer, one struggle that always seems uppermost is how to allow this background to inform one's writing without stereotyping or descent into a succession of Asian cliches. For "hyphenated" authors, whether immigrants themselves or so many generations removed that the hyphen all but disappears, using ethnicity and personal experiences can all too often lead to stories involving new... [ more ]
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran
MELANIE HO | 04 May 2010After publication of the bestselling The Good Women of China, the writer and journalist XINRAN received letters and photographs, video tapes and stories of Chinese girls who had been adopted overseas. Many of the letters begged Xinran to write the book that has become MESSAGE FROM AN UNKNOWN CHINESE MOTHER, pleading with her to record some of the stories she had witnessed throughout her years as a journalist in China about mothers forced to abandon... [ more ]
Butterfly Tears by Zoe S. Roy
MELANIE HO | 24 March 2010In BUTTERFLY TEARS, ZOE S. ROY's first collection of short stories, the author (herself a Chinese immigrant to Canada), must tread a fine balance between writing what she intimately knows and yet finding something new to add to a genre -- literature of the Asian immigrant experience -- which so many have and continue to write about.
With 15 stories in the collection, the book certainly has highlights. The... [ more ]
Petals from the Sky by Mingmei Yip
MELANIE HO | 26 February 2010PETALS FROM THE SKY is not your typical romance novel. Sure, there are elements -- including the requisite steamy scene two-thirds the way through -- but MINGMEI YIP has created her own mash-up of a genre: Harlequin + Asian Fiction.
Set in Hong Kong, China, New York and (briefly) Paris, Yip's second... [ more ]
Love in Translation by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
MELANIE HO | 10 January 2010How should one go about describing a country, perhaps foreign to much of your audience but not to all of it? Most likely by a mix of broad, sweeping statements to convey a sentiment of the country, contrasted with the exacting details about the moments that were most strange, foreign and commonly experienced.
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A Good Fall by Ha Jin
MELANIE HO | 15 November 2009In his first collection of short stories since 2000, HA JIN's A GOOD FALL is a beautifully written, elegant, subtle and yet always precise collection of twelve stories on the theme of Chinese immigrant experiences in the United State. Many of the stories have been previously published, but read consecutively in a collection, a new theme of the immigrant experience becomes obvious.
MELANIE HO | 03 September 2009An immigrant's tale told in a series of vignettes forming two complementing stories serves as the main basis for SUNG J WOO's debut novel EVERYTHING ASIAN. Half of the short chapters detail the Kim family's experience as they transition to their new life in suburban New Jersey. This story is woven with alternating chapters of the second broader story, sketches of life in Peddlers Town, a shopping mall filled with stores similar to the... [ more ]
