Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in
this spellbinding visceral debut about one family's queer desires violent impulses and buried
secrets.One evening Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman's
body. Her name was Hu Gu Po and she paid the price for her body in hunger. It's one of many
stories Daughter absorbs from the women in her family about gourd daughters buried gold and
rabbit moons. Soon afterwards Daughter wakes with a tiger tail.And more mysterious events
follow: holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her estranged grandmother a visiting
aunt arrives with red hands and snakes in her belly her brother tests the possibility of
flight.All the while Daughter is falling for Ben a neighbourhood girl who is more bird than
tiger and has mysterious stories of her own. As the two young lovers translate the
grandmother's letters and the myths that surround them Daughter must reckon with how deep
these stories are buried within her and what power is rising violently through her. She will
have to bring her family's secrets to light in order to change their destiny.With a poetic
voice of crackling electricity K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit
and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the magical realist aesthetic of Maxine Hong Kingston.
Tracing one family's history from Taiwan to America Bestiary is a lyrical and electrifying
novel of migration queer lineages and girlhood.
