Eating Chinese Food Naked

This poignant debut novel of Ng explores complexity of a mother-daughter relationship in two generations of an immigrant family and Ruby, the daughter’s not-so-easy awakening as the young, gifted, female, sexually confused and hyphenated as Asian descent in the urban set of NYC and its suburb, Queens. Ruby’s self-realization goes amiss when she reluctantly comes back to the tiny room above her immigrant parents’ laundry business after finishing her fancy degree in women’s studies from Ivy League, just an hour away by train, which now feels like a lifetime ago.

The journey Ruby sets out for is to find answers to all questions nobody helps to resolve– loving yet powerless mother, domineering and good old misogynist father, unambitious and volatile brother, locally settled and church going sister or her non-committal and callous Caucasian boyfriend– but herself, whether above her parents’ laundromat, in her boyfriend’s apartment or in a temping job until she finds her own room someday.