Ninetails: Nine Tales

Review

by Zhihui Zou
published on 26 February 2025

This short story collection critically engages with a thousand-year-old Chinese mythology by integrating it with the histories of Chinese immigrants, especially women. The collection contains both long-form narratives stretching across the whole book and individual short stories. This collection is an easy read that suits anyone looking for a fictional approach to Chinese mythology, immigration history, and gender history.

The nine-tailed fox, one of the most iconic folklore creatures in traditional Chinese mythology, often carries a derogatory connotation, as it has been historically used as an icon referring to sexually active or seductive women who would bring destruction to a family, region, or country. However, the fox icon has not always carried this meaning. Some of the oldest written records of this myth trace back to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, or Shanhaijing, a collection of Chinese mythology and tales dating as far back as the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period (475-221 BCE). In classical texts, foxes are often shown as intelligent shape-shifters who often take the form of a woman. Over the centuries, the connotation of foxes in mythological tales and folklore changed. The effect of popular literature on foxes was significantly influenced by the Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods, published in the 16th century by Xu Zhonglin. This novel, which remains a popular narrative in China today, incorporates many elements of Chinese folklore when depicting a fictional account of the transition between the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The nine-tailed fox, in this novel, is depicted as a malevolent vixen who led to the Shang dynasty's destruction.

In the short story collection Ninetails: Nine Tales, Sally Wen Mao revisits this Chinese folklore by combining the fox's narrative – as well as the historical misogyny and fear toward spirits – with the more modern histories of Chinese, especially Chinese women's, immigration history. The collection holds nine stories, each containing a female character who can shape-shift between her human and fox forms. The narratives all center around a community's fear, distrust, and the resulting alienation and antagonism toward women carrying fox spirits. These stories take place in Singapore, England, and New York City. Unlike a traditional story collection, there is one main narrative that is broken into five sections, with the other eight individual short stories placed between them. Suitable for a wide range of readers, this collection is a digestible and easy read that will simultaneously inspire readers to reflect on how icons and narratives could easily evolve over history as well as the immigration experience and the challenges that immigrants have faced during it.

The main narrative, titled "The Haunting of Angel Island," tells the story of Chinese women who were detained at Angel Island Immigration Station in the early 20th century amid legislations like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924. This story depicts the harsh living conditions of mostly Asian immigrants being detained on Angel Island, waiting for processing, and the community, resilience, and bond that the immigrants developed. Each of the five sections of this story is told from a different character's perspective, including a US-born Asian translator, a matron, a young girl, and a woman carrying the spirit of a fox. The author includes key historical details about Angel Island in this story, such as the poetry carved onto the walls and the lengthy, interrogation-esque questioning that US officials imposed on the immigrants.

Sally Wen Mao is a Chinese-born poet and author who has published three poetry collections before Ninetails. An experienced creative writer, Mao's work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Guernica, and other literary journals. At the end of the book, Ninetails includes a helpful bibliography of nonfiction books that helped Mao to write this collection to point readers to further reading materials if they wish to dive deeper into the historical topics discussed. As one of the few fictional books that engage with traditional Chinese mythology today, this book fills an important gap in modern English-language fiction. The short story format also helps readers to more easily engage with Chinese mythology without the pressure of consuming a full-length novel, making the material more accessible for readers who only have short periods of free time for casual reading. Those interested in more tales from Chinese mythology could consult the influential collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (1766), or Liaozhai Zhiyi, a Qing-dynasty collection of Chinese folklore and tales written by Pu Songling.

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