Ninetails

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 [that] 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)