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First published to acclaim in Australia, Look Who's Morphing by Asian-Australian writer Tom Cho is a funny, fantastical, often outlandish collection of stories firmly grounded in pop culture. The book's central character undergoes a series of startling transformations, shape-shifting through figures drawn from film, television, music, books, porn flicks, and comics. Often accompanied by family members, this narrator becomes Godzilla, Suzi Quatro, Whitney Houston's bodyguard, a Muppet, a gay leatherman, a nun who becomes a governess to the von Trapp children, and, in the book's lavish climax, a 100-foot-tall guitar-wielding rock star performing for an adoring troupe of fans in Tokyo.
Throughout these stories, there is a pervasive questioning of the nature of identity--cultural, racial, sexual, gender, and what lies beyond. Look Who's Morphing is a stylish, highly entertaining literary debut in which nothing, including one's self, can be taken for granted.
About this Author
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 128
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2014-04-02
Reviews
A delightfully eccentric look at life in a popular-culture saturated world ... Cho displays a fine eye for the camp and outrageous ... Cho's book is entertaining and thought-provoking. -The Australian
Cho's writing is pervasive in its ability to entertain; it seems effortless. And yet the book's themes linger after the last outrageous transformation is complete. -Text
Each of Tom Cho's 18 stories in his just-over 100-page-debut is a surprise waiting to happen to you. Already lauded and awarded in Cho's native Australia, his Stateside arrival is sure to elicit gasps, guffaws, and more ... This is fluid fiction, he seems to insist on every page: forget any expectations about culture, race, gender, sexuality, and more, and embrace the pure, fantastical stories found here. -Book Dragon (Smithsonian Asian American Pacific Centre)
[G]leefully absurd, opening a window into Cho's pop culture card catalogue of a brain capable of bridging the gap between Elvis and the atom bomb and the von Trapps and Whitney Houston with equal degrees of ease. -Backlisted
Cho's deliciously astute observations regarding the mutability of identity make for the perfect juicy center in the box of candy-colored bonbons that is Look Who's Morphing. -Lambda Literary
An extraordinary collection of short stories ... both [Tom Cho and poet Billeh Nickerson] infuse their dream landscapes with characters and narrative elements from popular culture. They both have produced texts infused with a fierce, transgressive eroticism inflected with anxiety. And both manage to locate their work at the intersections of the world of dreams and the world of pop in ways that are fresh and engaging. -Vancouver Sun
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