The Last Communist Virgin »

Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years spent farming in a mountain village commune, she attended Beijing University. In 1985 she left China to study in the United States, earning her PhD from New York University. She is the acclaimed author of the short story collection American Visa, the novel Foreign Devil, two poetry collections: Of Flesh & Spirit and The Magic Whip, and the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China.

"Wang Ping is a fearless, phenomenal writer."—Louise Erdrich

Publishers Weekly

Wang's second story collection follows two collections of poetry (The Magic Whipand Of Flesh and Spirit), a nonfiction work on footbinding (Aching for Beauty) and a novel (Foreign Devil). These seven loosely linked tales follow emigrés from the Chinese mainland to New York and environs. The title story, by far the longest, finds recurring narrator Wan Li in New York, homesick and clueless, but relying on the kindness of friends to get her an apartment share in Queens, a restaurant hostess job and a rich boyfriend (who doesn't realize that she really is a virgin bumpkin). "Forage" is a depressing look at the grasping single-mindedness of Wan Li's friend, Jeanne Shin, whose ascension into New York money hinges on "sweat and semen." "House of Anything You Wish" traces the despair of a young husband lodged in an Atlantic City casino, ruminating on the effect of assimilation on his beloved wife and son. Wang manages a magical realist return to China in the final story, "Maverick," where a man grieving for a lost river goddess (with whom he lived for 18 years) recalls her as the area is about to be flooded by a dam. Wang goes far beyond typical immigration story fare into uncharted territory. (Apr.)