SOURCE: Foster, Catherine. “A Wacky Mosaic of Teenage Self-Discovery.” Christian Science Monitor 88, no. 149 (27 June 1996): B2.

In the following review, Foster describes Mona in the Promised Land as a funny and satisfying novel.

The bare-bones plot of Gish Jen's novel Mona in the Promised Land, could have been written by a Benetton copywriter. Chinese girl in New York works in the family's pancake house; gets mad crush on a Japanese boy; becomes Jewish; volunteers on a suicide hot line; hangs out with her boyfriend in a tepee; and falls in with a low-life black crowd.

Are any groups left out?

Oh, yes—WASPs. Mona makes friends with one whose father pulls a fast one that gets the father of another friend of Mona's fired.

It's complicated, but funny.

Mona, Jen's narrator and perhaps alter ego, is a smart girl with a smart mouth, out of which comes an interesting...