One of the protagonists of Needlemouth, by K-Ming Chang, reminds me a little of the French fairy tale, Diamonds and Toads, in which a girl is cursed so that foul creatures fall out of her mouth whenever she opens it to speak. But in Needlemouth, the objects that start appearing in Cindy’s mouth range from buttons to needles, and there is no sister who dribbles out diamonds or even flowers, because in this society, girls are worthless and produce nothing, not even children, because they are just viewed as hosts for the bloodlines of their husbands. Girls exist to pay off their debts of being born, and Cindy and her cousins Mandy and Yangyang are being raised to expect nothing better than wifely lives of suffering and endurance. Their futures look so bad that when the hungry ghost/demon Needlemouth appears, Cindy eventually yields to her demands. That decision pitchforks all of them into crisis. This book has been a difficult read for me, steeped as it is in pessimism and resentment, but it’s increasingly interesting. Once resentment boils over into anger, rage, and fury, and the dreamy/nightmarish adventures start, it becomes much more engaging, even exciting, although far more horrific. There’s a lot of body horror and gore here, and internalized misogyny (internalized, because the three cousin-protagonists hardly ever see or hear directly from men, just their lecturing mothers/aunts), and misandry, and incitement to harming innocents and other forms of evil. There is also a lot of intriguing ideation here, for instance, the surprising relationships between the girls and certain kinds of birds. So, I certainly can’t recommend this book for all audiences, but it’s a fascinating work of art, and some people will find it heartening as the initially quarrelsome cousins band together and refuse to surrender each other to their apparent fates.
