Griever: An American Monkey King in China

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 240 pages
• Published by: University of Minnesota Press July 1990
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0816618496
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0816618491
• Book Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 10.1 ounces

Reader Reviews
This book looks interesting on the cover. After all, it has praise by Anthony C. Yu himself! However, if you look past the author's attempts to shock you with the worst side of China, you'll see he has more knowledge of Native American trickster traditions and only just a vague idea of the Monkey King. In addition to many Chinese language errors there are tons of places where he gets Sun Wukong's story just wrong! The most amusing to me being of course that he refers to Anthony C. Yu's "Journey to the West" translation, yet gets the author's name wrong! :) But it looks like Mr. Yu held no grudge. The story is told in an interesting surreal style, but the plot itself is a rather cliched American man meets Asian woman tragedy. All in all this book remains a typical novel written in the Mid-80's when China bashing was in vogue and reading novels about it was a favorite assignment of college professors. It may have seemed original in it's day and may have contained some truth, but in 2001 it seems as stereotypical a depiction of PRC as much as older novels that depict China as a mysterious, exotic land with an inscrutable population that knows kungfu and ancient secrets.