China Cowboy

Book excerpt: Fiction. Poetry. Asian American Studies. In the technicolor timewarp called Hell, Hong Kong, wannabe cowgirl La La is hellbent on realizing her dream to be a folk-singing sensation, even if it means surviving a dysfunctional relationship with her kidnapper, Ren, who is just hellbent. Ren thinks he'll win, but La La, dead or alive, always wins. "Moving between the explicit descriptions of the Marquis de Sade and the implicit ironies of Nabokov, these pieces are excruciatingly compelling, so infernal as they are related in languages variously pornographic and desperately, radically tender. Short's brilliant tragicomedy can be read as a metaphor for China's dynamic with American culture or the story of any determined enterprising youth whose eager 'bloody head' under a bumbling tyrant's 'boot is bent.' A bold, imaginative, timely work from a courageous and complex thinker." Heidi Lynn Staples "Heated & heartbreaking, CHINA COWBOY charms like wedding cans, flesh-filled, on tarmac. This car (perhaps an old, long Cadillac with longhorns glaring & charred) contains a man, Ren: a 'family man' or 'something commensurate.' La-La: our heroine. & the driver, guiding us expertly over the bluegrass, bodies & Time Warps of Hell, child abuse, power & Country Music is Kim Gek Lin Short." Rauan Klassnik "CHINA COWBOY is more hydra than hybrid, a slim monster sprouting new directions for form, narrative, culture, and identity. Meanwhile, everything it bites comes to vicious, gorgeous life." Christian TeBordo"