Monkey Hunting [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Cristina Garcia (Author), Robertson Dean (Amer.) (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2003

Cristina Garcia traces the treacherous path of immigration and assimilation that faced the Chinese who were enslaved and brought to Cuba in the 19th century. Chen Pan is one such Chinese man, who escapes from slavery and makes a prosperous career in Havana as a free man running a well-regarded second-hand store. The fates of his children and grandchildren are more problematic. Chen Fang, his granddaughter, is raised in China as a boy, so that her father, who returned to Cuba before she was born, will send money for her schooling; she dies in Mao Zedong's prisons. Domingo Chen, his great-grandson, applies for American citizenship when Castro comes to power, only to be caught up in Vietnam. This is a thrilling and unusual family saga.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette: 4 pages
• Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc.; Unabridged edition (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0736693955
• ISBN-13: 978-0736693950
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,361,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

NOTE TO READERS: If you'd like your copy of The Lady Matador's Hotel signed and/or dedicated, please message me through my website and I'll let you know where to send the book(s). Book clubs welcome! Return postage on me. Ole!

Cristina García is the author of five novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, and The Lady Matador's Hotel.
García has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. Two works for young readers, The Dog Who Loved the Moon, and I Wanna Be Your Shoebox were published in 2008. A collection of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, was recently published by Akashic Press. Her new young adult novel, Dreams of Significant Girls, will be published in July 2011.

García's work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. She has taught literature and writing at numerous universities and divides her time between Texas and northern New Mexico. Please visit her website at www.cristinagarcianovelist.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time, Change, Loss and Memory, June 4, 2003

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Monkey Hunting (Hardcover)

From his village in China, Chen Pan, aged twenty, is tricked into indentured servitude, shipped across the oceans to Cuba, and for the next few years he will work as a slave cutting sugar cane. The year is 1857. Time rolls on. Chen Pan has children, grand-children, great grand-children. The story moves easily between the generations, between China and Cuba and the United States and Viet Nam, returning in the end to Chen Pan, now eighty years old, 1917.

There is no tightly crafted plot here, no suspense, no dramatic surprises. The book is a series of scenes, vignettes, from the lives of this remarkable family, their times, the countries where they live, social change, their loves and their losses, brief moments of optimism and joy, against a background of growing old, suffering, sorrow and clinging to memory.

It is a beautifully written, exquisite memoir. Author Garcia evokes wonderful portraits of times and places and creates engaging characters, using simple and lucid language. Once you pick up this book you will never want to put it down, for you will become part of the Chen family forever. This is a masterpiece and I can't recommend it too highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting idea, terrible end result, February 4, 2008

By 

Illustrisimus (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Monkey Hunting (Hardcover)

I generally prefer reading reviews than writing them, but when something excites or upsets me I want to share it with the world. Garcia creates interesting outlines of characters and, in my opinion, utterly fails to deliver them to the reader. I have to write a response paper on this and all I want to say is that she has no clue what she is doing and that it should be used as kindling. It's obvious that she can write, and some of the passages are beautiful and engaging, but overall the characters don't come to life and I am kept wondering - what on earth was the point of this book? Blah.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Garcia, Explore a Saga for this, February 7, 2007

By 

J. Arreola "Book Lover in WI" (Friendship WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Monkey Hunting (Hardcover)

I love Christina Garcia and looked so forward to reading this book which may be why I am so let down. Typically I am able to get the entire picture from a novel, even if it is not plot driven - which this one had absolutely no plot, no character growth and no reason to continue reading. The concept is excellent, finding the descendents from one country (China) and tracing them through three eras and three countries (China, Cuba, and America)! Definitely a concept worth exploring maybe more in a saga type novel, not a 251 page novel where you have no time to explore the characters and their connections to one another. Not to take anything away from Garcia - Dreaming in Cuban was set up similar to this, but you had more time with each character and came to love and show concern for what happened to them. Here, you just didn't care because you didn't really know the characters. The linear patterns for all three characters went like this, born, shifted location, something big happens, death or in Chen Pan's case immortality. The something big that happened was also so slight that you barely knew something happened overall. There were no problems, just daily life adjusting the characters, again no reason to read. This is just my opinion and I may be missing the big picture on this one, but I typically don't.