Steer Toward Rock - Hardcover

experience is an essential story for our time. Issues of race and social class, long the

thematic fodder of novelists, have become more complex with the explosion of immigrant

communities. The prime American theme of identity has become political and moral, as

native and immigrant alike confront what it means to be the "other" to those who live

next door to you. Fae Myenne Ng entered this landscape 15 years ago with her

much-heralded first novel, Bone. . . . In Steer Toward Rock, Ng takes us to the

same Chinatown in an earlier time, the McCarthy era and the turbulent 1960s, offering a

more poetic, imagistic and ultimately deeper investigation into the dark and complex

heart of the immigrant experience." -- Los Angeles Times

"Combining elements of gangster noir, romance, grumpy-old-man comedy, and family

drama, Ng finds a fresh and exciting way to tell a familiar story." -- Elle

"Fae Myenne Ng has written a luminous love story..." -- Junot Díaz, author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"Fae Myenne Ng writes like a bebop jazzer, a Miles Davis trumpet solo, tough and trenchant; moody and poetic..." -- Ben Fong Torres, author of The Rice Room, award-winning (former) editor of Rolling Stone

"Here is a tale about illegal aliens from China, told with their own images, idioms, and axioms--and charming humor." -- Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

"In Steer Toward Rock, Fae Myenne Ng confirms the extraordinary talent she displayed in Bone." -- Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers

"It took Ng 15 years to produce her second novel, Steer Toward Rock . . . and

those who privilege themselves by reading it through will not for one moment wonder why.

Steer Toward Rock is Chinatown again, Immigration, confession, disappointment,

wreckage and salvage. It is relentlessly fierce and unstintingly lovely. . . . Ng takes

her time, says what she truly means to say, stares complication straight in the face,

stares it down. One feels her attacking this fiction-writing business as if it's the

most important chance any of us will ever get to put the truth on paper, and one is

left--it can't be helped--in awe of her talent." -- Chicago Tribune

"Ng's second novel (Bone, 1993) depicts the tensions and affections of a complex

Chinese-American family in San Francisco. . . . Her true subject [is] the cultural

gulf between immigrants and their children, between aliens and citizens, the naturalized

and the native." -- Publishers Weekly

"This eagerly awaited follow-up to Fae Myenne Ng's first novel, Bone, again

addresses the issues of Chinese-American identity in this moving, unflinching yet

sometimes witty story. . . . A nuanced portrayal of two generations and the many

challenges they face in their quest for security and fulfillment." -- Booklist

"This is an always gorgeous and often terrifying love story. It's a poetic study of loyalty, love, loneliness, hard work..." -- Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian