Jen to read 'Mona' at Shaman on Friday

Multiculturalism, ethnicity and diversity have been hot issues throughout the '90s, as every University student has probably discovered. These topics have been discussed everywhere, from lectures to letters to the editor, and these discussions all seem to have one thing in common: their utter seriousness and lack of humor. Thanks to Gish Jen's novel "Mona in the Promised Land," this is no longer a problem.

PREVIEW
	Gish Jen Friday at 8 p.m. Shaman Drum Free

"Mona in the Promised Land" follows the characters from Jen's earlier novel, "Typical American." That book focused on Chinese immigrants Ralph and Helen Chang, as they adapted to American life. This second novel, however, is set a few years later, in 1968, and the main character is the Changs' daughter, 16-year-old Mona.

"It was not a planned thing," said Jen, as she described how she came to write the book. "I just happened to write this story about Mona."

In this book, Mona and her friends find a simple solution to their cultural dilemmas: ethnic "switching." Mona goes to temple with her best friend and eventually converts to Judaism, while her Jewish boyfriend Seth decides he may have been Indian in a past life. Meanwhile, Mona's older sister Callie is learning about Chinese culture from her African American roommate. While this may sound too unusual to be true, it's definitely an appealing solution to the problems of ethnic identification.

"Mona" differs from its predecessor in its rapid pace and deadpan-hilarious prose. Jen said this change in tone was partly because, "I think I was happy to be writing. I was just grateful for every moment I was at my desk."

Jen's 5-year-old son probably influenced this style, too; when raising a child, it becomes important to maximize your time. As Jen summed it up, "I had to go to my office, down a double cappuccino, and start writing - the people at Starbucks got to know me pretty well. This is the book that caffeine wrote."

However, Jen said that her early writing career was not fueled by caffeine, but by a Harvard course with noted translator Robert Fitzgerald, in which she was assigned to write poetry.

After graduation, Jen got a publishing job, and considered taking up several other jobs, before deciding to write full-time. "I really became a writer by process of elimination."

As Jen's book suggest, the ethnic-switching solution seems like a neat way to resolve such dilemmas: why be limited to one identity? However, readers do have to wonder if this idea is even possible, in the ethnically compartmentalized '90s.

"It was easier to switch (in the '60s)," Jen said. "Now, there's so much ethnic balkanization. A lot of the euphoria of the late '60s and early '70s is gone."

But reading "Mona in the Promised Land" definitely gives a taste of this euphoria - it might even inspire a new era of tolerance and true multiculturalism. After all, the real point the book makes is that ethnic fluidity and diversity are the essence of American culture.

In one scene, Mona's Japanese friend Sherman suggests that she become Japanese. It's easy, he says. A person can become Japanese "like you become American. Switch."

Jen will read at Shaman Drum Friday.

04-22-97