SOURCE: A review of Monkey King, in Salon Magazine, February 27, 1997.

[In the following review, Kirk admires Chao's focus in Monkey King on the gulf between generations of immigrants to America but finds the protagonist's final resolution "almost unbearably naive."]

Midway through this accomplished first novel [Monkey King], we learn that there's an old Chinese folk tale about an evil god called the Monkey King. He has a special pole—the primary instrument of his mischief-making—that he can "make small to carry, big to hit people with." As it happens. "Monkey King" is also the name assumed by the narrator's father in the middle of the night, when he comes to his daughter's bed to force himself on her. This is where you start thinking: Please, not another Dad's-magic-pole story. But Chao succeeds with a difficult subject; she has taken a topic that nowadays veers dangerously close to...