Bestiary

It was very interesting to read this right after Transcendent Kingdom. Both novels deal with diasporic narratives, mother-daughter relationships, and (folk) religion. Curiously, they both recounted an anecdote based on the apparent myth that a mother bird will abandon her baby bird if she smells the scent of a strange human on it.

Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of a neuroscientist who strikes me as particularly cerebral and less attuned to her heart and spirit (perhaps at the root of her conflicts) - a perspective I appreciate and resonate with, although I think that could have been drawn out more in the story. I read a couple articles and interviews with K-Ming Chang, the author of Bestiary, who talks about how her stories are “completely embodied.” This contrast between embodiment and cerebral-ness is really interesting to me.

Bestiary is unusual in its angle on magical realism; the characters take the magic that manifests in their lives and is the main propelling force in the narrative for granted, even when it's bizarre or grisly, and often disgusting. I feel like this is a way of showing how they integrate their folk religious beliefs, which for me is a refreshing change from more commonly represented perspectives and experiences of religion or spiritual beliefs. At the same time, this focus made it challenging for me (a more cerebral type) to really understand the characters in Bestiary. A lot of the embodiment - the physicality, bodily functions, and sexual desire - was off-putting, and not relatable or even very recognizable to me.

Like the author, I am Taiwanese on my mother's side and mainland Chinese on my father's, so I very much appreciate reading a Taiwanese narrative that provides an Indigenous perspective and is not centered on the mainland.