Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen Quotes

“We never sleep. What will happen when all grandmas run out of fire? We can’t die. We die, nobody take care of you.”
― Marilyn Chin, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen

“Moon grew up, lost weight and became a famous singer, which proves that there is no justice in the universe, or that indeed, there is justice. Your interpretation of the denouement mostly depends on your race, creed, hair color, social and economic class and political proclivities -- whether or not you are a revisionist feminist and have a habit of cheering for the underdog. What is the moral of the story? Well, it's a tale of revenge, obviously written from the Chinese American girl's perspective. My intentions are to veer you away from teasing and humiliating little chubby Chinese girls like myself. And that one wanton act of humiliation you perpetrated on the fore or aft of that boat on my arrival may be one humiliating act too many.

For although we are friendly neighbors, you don't really know me. You don't know the depth of my humiliation. And you don't know what I can do. You don't know what is beneath my doing.”
― Marilyn Chin, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen

“She/I -- the dreamer -- cannot act as a principal in her own dream. She, the narrator of the table, is an easy accomplice. She sits quietly on the sidelines at the dance, waiting to be invited. The watcher has a bitter place in the world. She has so much yearning in her heart, so little acumen. Her loneliness is unbearable. Her unrequited longing calcified into her ventricles. Her silence welling up in her throat, all she can do now is gasp or sing for blood. She must quench her thirst for revenge. She must sound the sirens. She must rage out for being the obedient one, for being the repressed singer, for being that perfect Chinese girlhood too timorous to break the mold.”
― Marilyn Chin, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen