Ninetails Nine tales

Award-winning poet Mao's fiction debut is a spectacularly multifaceted collection about women and their feral superpowers. Her title signifies the nine-tailed fox of ancient Asian folklore, which shape-shifts between an irresistible woman and a vixen who preys on (bad) men. One of the pieces alluded to by the clever subtitle is a novella, "The Haunting of Angel Island," which is intriguingly separated into four evenly distributed sections among the other eight tales. It exposes racist history, highlighting ordeals suffered by various Chinese women held in Angel Island's immigration station. One of the gatekeepers to Gold Mountain admission is California-born Tye, who serves as translator. Other exquisite tales include "Love Doll," in which the most coveted love doll in the entire mall becomes one of many in a luxurious penthouse owned by a mysterious man and the live-in caretaker. In "Beasts of the Chase," a viatrix demon remembers her past as a bullied transracial adoptee. Elsewhere, a troubled teen causes a "genital-retracting illness," a woman shrinks to tininess, a girl cries flies instead of tears, and a fox and ghost make better companions after deserting the same cheating lover. "A Huxian's Guide to Seduction Revenge Immortality" displays a stinging condemnation of unforgivable male violence. Mao challenges and disrupts expectations of womanhood, demanding and forging brilliant new narratives.

Poet Mao (The Kingdom of Surfaces) cleverly riffs on J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories and Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio in her well-constructed debut collection, which takes its name from the nine tails of the hulijing, a mythological female fox spirit. Recurring snippets of the frame tale, "The Haunting of Angel Island," connect all the other stories as Mao traces the different journeys of a number of Chinese women at an immigration station on Angel Island, Calif., including governmental translator Tye Leung, fox spirit medium Mother Bai, opera singer Fenglu, and flower boat girl turned poet Hanna. Throughout, Mao fleshes out metaphors into full stories, as with the "hopeless crushes manifest as rocks" large enough to literally crush someone in "The Crush" and the woman who makes herself so small she's able to ride wasps in the "The Fig Queen." Other entries deal more directly with fox spirits, including "Lotus Stench," which retells Pu Songling's "Lotus Fragrance" for the dating app age, and the sly "A Huixan's Guide to Seduction Revenge Immortality." Taking a sometimes brutal look at the objectification and dehumanization of women and the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., these smart, fabulist pieces confirm Mao's reputation as a voice to be reckoned with. Agent: Clare Mao, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (May)