Ninetails: Nine Tales - Sally Wen Mao Audiobook

Written by Sally Wen Mao
Read by Nancy Wu, Annie Q, Jen Zhao, Eunice Wong
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: May 28, 2024
Duration: 09:16:17

In the nine tales of Ninetails, acclaimed poet Sally Wen Mao re-imagines the fox spirit from Asian folklore—a shape-shifter, 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.

In her well-constructed debut collection, which takes its name from the nine tails of the hulijing, a mythological female fox spirit. Recurring snippets of the frame tale, “The Haunting of Angel Island,” connect all the other stories as Mao traces the different journeys of a number of Chinese women at an immigration station on Angel Island, Calif., including governmental translator Tye Leung, fox spirit medium Mother Bai, opera singer Fenglu, and flower boat girl turned poet Hanna. Throughout, Mao fleshes out metaphors into full stories, as with the “hopeless crushes manifest as rocks” large enough to literally crush someone in “The Crush” and the woman who makes herself so small she’s able to ride wasps in the “The Fig Queen.” Other entries deal more directly with fox spirits, including “Lotus Stench,” which retells Pu Songling’s “Lotus Fragrance” for the dating app age, and the sly “A Huixan’s Guide to Seduction Revenge Immortality.” Taking a sometimes brutal look at the objectification and dehumanization of women and the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., these smart, fabulist pieces confirm Mao’s reputation as a voice to be reckoned with.