Fiction, World Literature, Fiction Subjects, Peoples & Cultures - Fiction

The Last Communist Virgin

Name: The Last Communist Virgin
Author: Wang Ping
ISBN: 9781566891950

by Wang Ping, Ping Wang

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Overview

“Wang Ping’s The Last Communist Virgin is a beauty of a collection. She has interwoven the earthiness of China and the harshness of immigrant life . . . to create a series of short stories that are at once pitiful, heartbreaking, funny, and deeply inspiring.”—Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

From the restaurants of New York’s Chinatown to the retail emporium of Bergdorf Goodman, and from remote Chinese military outposts to the streets of Beijing, the tremors of China’s rapid economic and cultural growth can be felt. As the characters in these stories struggle to find their way, a young girl discovers love amidst a sea of angry Red Guards, émigrés navigate New York’s relentless rat race, an ambitious businesswoman finds the meaning of success in her rival, and an old man returns to a Beijing he doesn’t recognize on a mission to restore his son-in-law’s flagging honor.

Moving smoothly across political, cultural, and personal borders and between countries, continents, and languages, these stories open a window into the rapid transformations of an ancient culture and the soul’s thirst for adventure and harmony in a quickly changing world.

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. She now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and teaches at Macalester College. Visit her website at www.wangping.com.

Synopsis

"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.)

About the Author, Wang Ping

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.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

KLIATT - Nola Theiss

Wan Li, like most of the characters in these seven interconnected stories, is an immigrant to America who suffers many of the trials of her ilk. In the first story, she is shuttling from one bad room to another, trying to find a place that is not dangerous, dirty or dreadful. Studying for her master's degree, working in restaurants, she finds love with handsome Peng Chen. This leads to trouble with another emigre, Jeanne Shin, who has quickly become Americanized and looks at Wan Li with disdain. These three characters leapfrog among the stories until we gradually understand them and their motives. Other stories are unrelated to them, including "The Homecoming of an Old Beijing Man," which tells the story of an old man who has never completely made the transition to life in Minnesota. His observations about China and America are revealing. The last story, "Maverick," harkens back to traditional Asian stories. Its characters include a fish that turns into a woman and falls in love, but then, after many years, must return to the sea. While the stories are not all about the same characters, and some are set in America and some in China, there is a common thread concerning the immigrant who is sometimes is "a fish out of water."

Library Journal

This latest offering from Shanghai-born novelist (Foreign Devil), poet (Magic Whip), and teacher (Macalester Coll.) Wang is a collection of seven wistful short stories set in China and the United States. The longest story and the anchor of the collection is the title piece, which concerns college students Wan Li (nicknamed "the Communist virgin") and her friend Jeanne Shinn's mutual affection for wealthy playboy (and mamma's boy) Peng Chen. The stories just before ("House of Anything You Wish") and after ("Forage") provide background to the characters Jeanne Shinn and Tiger Pan, a.k.a. White Tiger. The issues surrounding stereotypical and cultural perceptions of gender and socioeconomic inequities are highlighted throughout the collection. Whether seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl in China, as in "Where the Poppies Grow," or those of an older, naturalized Chinese American man returning to Beijing, as in "Homecoming of an Old Beijing Man," sex and violence are understood by Wang's characters as tools to be used for power and survival. Wang's attempt to assimilate her characters while connecting them to both Chinese and American mindsets provides just a touch of similarity to the attitudes reflected in Annie Wang's The People's Republic of Desire. Overall, this work should be of interest to both public and academic libraries with Chinese American literature collections.
—Shirley N. Quan

Kirkus Reviews

Seven interconnected stories chronicle the multifaceted, often ugly life of the 21st-century Chinese immigrant. Wang Ping begins her inquiry into the Chinese immigration experience on the mainland-specifically, in a Navy compound of family apartments on the East China Sea, where the only thing that a pair of sisters has in common is their desire to eventually have a bed to themselves. In the first story, "Where the Poppies Blow," the plain, practical narrator grows a secret garden in the yard of the wealthy admiral, whose twin daughters have befriended the narrator's charming younger sister. But in the following story, "Crush," which presumably features the same pair of sisters, the narrator gets the upper hand. The family shelters a neighboring family from an onslaught of bullets. While the sister tries to charm the handsome neighbor boy, he is interested only in the narrator and her storytelling abilities. The sisters foreshadow Wan Li and Jeanne Shin, characters in two later stories, which take place after the women have immigrated to New York. In the title story, Wan Li is a prudent student who flits between rat-infested apartments in Flushing and Chinatown, working in restaurants while attending school. Though she improbably hooks rich, handsome Chinese playboy Peng, Wan Li doesn't give in to the temptations of the capitalist West until she finds herself at the mercy of her mysteriously generous landlord, Genji. Meanwhile, Wan Li's classmate, Jeanne, who narrates "Forage," finds money and possessions all too alluring, and uses her body to attract the likes of Tiger (also the narrator of "House of Anything You Wish"), who mourns the wife and son he lost to a white man. Though welllinked, the seven stories function independently, which not only speaks to the author's narrative abilities, but also serves as a poignant metaphor for the splintered community she describes. Thorough and thought-provoking.