China Mountain Zhang
Maureen F. McHugh
313 pages
published in 1992
China Mountain Zhang is the fourth novel I’ve read in my Year of Reading Women project. It had been on my shelves unread for over a decade before that, silently accusing me every time I walked past. Some novels are like that, shoved aside each time for a more interesting looking book. Which is one of the reasons I put it on my list of twelve science fiction novels written by women to read this year: to force me to finally read it.
Because I should’ve read this long ago. China Mountain Zhang was Maureen McHugh’s debut novel and was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1992, winning the Lambda Literary Award (best science fiction with LGBT themes), the Locus Award for best first novel, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (feminist themed science fiction). It also has always been a highly regarded novel in the fan circles I hang around in. Yet until now I never had even tried to read it, largely because everytime I looked through my bookshelves the cover repelled me. And of course you should never judge a book by its cover, but in this case the cover did seem to promise something worthy but dull I never was quite in the mood for. A bit dumb, because of course China Mountain Zhang turned out to be just as good as its hype had made it out to be.