Penguin Books, coming May 28th, 2024
ISBN: 9780143137894
Order:
About Ninetails:
A “sly and spirited” fabulist debut collection of stories re-imagining the nine-tailed fox spirit of Asian folklore (C Pam Zhang).
A fox spirit avenges a teen girl by seducing her abuser. A shapeshifting woman finds herself chased through the woods by fox hunters; meanwhile, an assassination plot called Operation Fox Hunt unfolds against the last Queen of Korea. Chinese migrants hoping to make new lives as “paper children” in America find their pasts—and their hopes for the future—embodied in the foxes that haunt the harbor in 1900s Angel Island. In the nine tales of Ninetails, acclaimed poet Sally Wen Mao reimagines the fox spirit from Asian folklore—a shapeshifter, shaman, and seductress—as an icon of vengeance, solidarity and liberation. The characters of her stories are varied—from silicone sex dolls who come to life with new purpose, to women whose crushes manifest as stones—but they all reach for a common purpose: to find truth and belonging in a difficult world determined to consider them alien.
With the fabulist vibrancy of Carmen Maria Machado, the sinuous world-building of Helen Oyeyemi, and the sensuous feminist rage of Han Kang, Ninetails is both timeless—unearthing a cultural icon whose origins date back over a thousand years—and timely in its contemporary political urgency.
“A sumptuous and lively collection, leaping from story to story in much the same way a fox does — surprisingly, gracefully, and with impressive aim. I loved this book.”
“Award-winning poet Mao’s fiction debut is a spectacularly multifaceted collection about women and their feral superpowers….Mao challenges and disrupts expectations of womanhood, demanding and forging brilliant new narratives.”
“What I love most about Ninetails is its fierce allegiance to underdogs of all kinds, its careful and myriad empathy for its characters, but also its pure and artisanal delight in language and fictive possibilities. It marks, to my mind, the beginning of a poet’s long and potent exploration in literature’s most capaci
ous genre. And it’s a welcomed sight to see.”
“Mao’s own poetic roots are on full display in these vibrant fairy tales that feel at once like they have existed for hundreds of years and are freshly imagined.”
“Ninetails is a spirited modern fairy tale that takes cues from history, mythology, headline news, dating apps, and Mao’s gift for sly observation. This is an exploration of the animal magic within the feminine, written with ardor and ambition.”
“Fiercely imaginative and nourished by a wild subterranean river of magic, folklore, and futuristic myth, Sally Wen Mao’s Ninetails is a beguiling book and one that challenges the reader to conjure strange new modes of subverting oppression. Long a luminary of the poetry world, Sally Wen Mao proves here that she is an unstoppable, incandescent force in prose as well.”
“With Ninetails, Mao weaves a beguiling and epic paean to the power of the feminine. Lyrical and virtuosic, with a sly sense of humor, this collection features a colorful and unforgettable cast of characters, from love dolls to dancers to translators to witches. A bewitching fiction debut as magical and shape-shifting as the fox spirit herself.”