SOURCE: Miner, Valerie. “Asian-American Pancake.” Nation 262, no. 24 (17 June 1996): 35-6.

In the following review, Miner describes Mona in the Promised Land as a witty but ultimately uneventful novel.

What may distinguish our immigrant parents from the general mass of fretting fathers and mothers is that their decision to “create a new life in a new place” instills a profound conviction in will. Hence the children inherit responsibility as much as opportunity. “One generation is supposed to build on the last, ascending and ascending like the steps of a baby bamboo shoot.”

In Gish Jen's second novel, Mona in the Promised Land, Ralph and Helen Chang want the best for their children, and they know what best is. Their exercise of control as protection engraves deep generational rifts. In this late-twentieth-century American Bildungsroman, Jen deftly investigates sexuality, class, religion, politics and race through the curious eyes of charming Mona Chang...