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Bone House
A 26-page micro-chapbook, part of Bull City Press' INCH series!
Bone House is a queer Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights, both a love story and a ghost story – it revolves around a Millet, a woman of unidentifiable lineage, and her destructive romance with Cathy Chiu, modeled after Cathy from Bronte's novel. As our unnamed narrator moves into Bone House, a butcher’s mansion with a life of its own, she finds herself haunted by Cathy’s unrelenting ghost, while also becoming ensnared in her own attraction to Millet. All three women come to understand that their histories are inextricable and cyclical, and that they are bound together by desire and violence.
Bone House is a queer Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights, both a love story and a ghost story – it revolves around a Millet, a woman of unidentifiable lineage, and her destructive romance with Cathy Chiu, modeled after Cathy from Bronte's novel. As our unnamed narrator moves into Bone House, a butcher’s mansion with a life of its own, she finds herself haunted by Cathy’s unrelenting ghost, while also becoming ensnared in her own attraction to Millet. All three women come to understand that their histories are inextricable and cyclical, and that they are bound together by desire and violence.
29 pages, Chapbook
First published January 1, 2021
About the author
K-Ming Chang
17 books768 followersK-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the debut novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short story collection, GODS OF WANT, is forthcoming from One World.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
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September 24, 2024
‘Some desires are only legible in the dark.’
Stories can be a house into which we are welcomed inside. We lounge upon the finery of prose that decorates and dazzles each room and hallway of emotion. Later as we peer back through the windows of the narrative, we find the world changed through its beveled glass, the landscape awash in the creeping shadow of the house. Such fresh perspectives have long been said to be found in Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, a story which, interestingly enough, was once described by author David Markson as being mostly about people are ‘continually looking in and out of windows.’ Not content to merely gaze in and out of the Heathcliff home, K-Ming Chang throws open the shutters to climb inside and remake the novel as her own in Bone House. Renovating the Brontë’s story with a toolbelt of exquisite prose, this modern day queer retelling features Taiwanese-Americans caught in a cycle of deep desires, both of passionate yearnings and a ‘desire to be disintegrated’ intertwined so tightly one can hardly find the seams. Fresh yet familiar, Bone House brings its guests and ghosts through a fraught history and towards a conclusion that will clench your heart in Chang’s brilliant vision.
‘Its the way she says Cathy that makes me listen, the way a woman pleads to any deity that has dammed all her prayers, redirected them to death. A woman deboned of hope.’
I cannot in good conscience say anything further without ranting about how absolutely astonishing the prose that pours from K-Ming Chang is in this retelling. It weaves before the readers eyes as if to hypnotize you in its beauty, arriving so assured yet haunted as it delivers such delightfully visceral imagery such as ‘water foaming in the pipes like a mouthful of rabies,’ or a ‘silver sky so bright he sutured his eyes.’ Each page is drips pure gems of poetic expression and it is no surprise to learn that Chang is also an accomplished poet as well as an author (you can read her poetry here). While this is only a short story, the power of the prose builds a structure far greater than its page length and readers will come away feeling as fulfilled and overcome by its narrative as they would a full length novel.
‘Another word for lesbian is: devourer of the dark.’
I adored the queer retelling aspects as well as the cultural shift from Brontë’s original and while Chang uses the bones of the classic she bestows a flesh and life that is all her own. Here Heathcliff is transformed as Millet, a baby girl abandoned above international waters between Taiwan and the US, and her rival for Cathy’s affections is not Edgar but Edie, a woman with a ‘star-spangled surname’ from the Arizona desert.
‘Millet is the field beneath my feet, is how I walk the world, she is the hinge in my knee when I lower myself for prayer, but Edie is the thing I pray up to.’
Chang brings us through a history of relationships flowing with self-destructive impulses—Edie ‘disturbed by this part of Cathy, the quills in her, the part that wanted Millet to strangle her so that she could shingle herself with stars’—while the present spirals through visions of ghosts in garments of modern gothic. It grips you as tightly as Millet’s hands around Cathy’s neck.
‘Cathy believed that the more she and Edie thirsted, the deeper their roots would snare inside each other. They would find inside each other’s bodies all the water they wanted.’
Chang’s Bone House is far more than a retelling as much as it reads as far more than a simple short story. There is a freshness here that speaks to immigrant family culture, lesbian desires, and a ghostly hope that brings us to a new ending that plays the reader’s heartstrings like a violin. There is excellent thematic motifs with water—water that is life giving but also ‘can raft my bones and colonize them with rot’—or its absence. The desert drains, the people have fake flowers, the people ‘don’t want anything that dies for real.’ However, death cannot be escaped, though in dodging it we often wonder ‘what have I lost to live?’ Brilliantly told and as haunting as the home in which the ghosts inhabit, Bone House is an impeccable tale.
5/5
‘Come tether us together, come flood us a future.’
Stories can be a house into which we are welcomed inside. We lounge upon the finery of prose that decorates and dazzles each room and hallway of emotion. Later as we peer back through the windows of the narrative, we find the world changed through its beveled glass, the landscape awash in the creeping shadow of the house. Such fresh perspectives have long been said to be found in Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, a story which, interestingly enough, was once described by author David Markson as being mostly about people are ‘continually looking in and out of windows.’ Not content to merely gaze in and out of the Heathcliff home, K-Ming Chang throws open the shutters to climb inside and remake the novel as her own in Bone House. Renovating the Brontë’s story with a toolbelt of exquisite prose, this modern day queer retelling features Taiwanese-Americans caught in a cycle of deep desires, both of passionate yearnings and a ‘desire to be disintegrated’ intertwined so tightly one can hardly find the seams. Fresh yet familiar, Bone House brings its guests and ghosts through a fraught history and towards a conclusion that will clench your heart in Chang’s brilliant vision.
‘Its the way she says Cathy that makes me listen, the way a woman pleads to any deity that has dammed all her prayers, redirected them to death. A woman deboned of hope.’
I cannot in good conscience say anything further without ranting about how absolutely astonishing the prose that pours from K-Ming Chang is in this retelling. It weaves before the readers eyes as if to hypnotize you in its beauty, arriving so assured yet haunted as it delivers such delightfully visceral imagery such as ‘water foaming in the pipes like a mouthful of rabies,’ or a ‘silver sky so bright he sutured his eyes.’ Each page is drips pure gems of poetic expression and it is no surprise to learn that Chang is also an accomplished poet as well as an author (you can read her poetry here). While this is only a short story, the power of the prose builds a structure far greater than its page length and readers will come away feeling as fulfilled and overcome by its narrative as they would a full length novel.
‘Another word for lesbian is: devourer of the dark.’
I adored the queer retelling aspects as well as the cultural shift from Brontë’s original and while Chang uses the bones of the classic she bestows a flesh and life that is all her own. Here Heathcliff is transformed as Millet, a baby girl abandoned above international waters between Taiwan and the US, and her rival for Cathy’s affections is not Edgar but Edie, a woman with a ‘star-spangled surname’ from the Arizona desert.
‘Millet is the field beneath my feet, is how I walk the world, she is the hinge in my knee when I lower myself for prayer, but Edie is the thing I pray up to.’
Chang brings us through a history of relationships flowing with self-destructive impulses—Edie ‘disturbed by this part of Cathy, the quills in her, the part that wanted Millet to strangle her so that she could shingle herself with stars’—while the present spirals through visions of ghosts in garments of modern gothic. It grips you as tightly as Millet’s hands around Cathy’s neck.
‘Cathy believed that the more she and Edie thirsted, the deeper their roots would snare inside each other. They would find inside each other’s bodies all the water they wanted.’
Chang’s Bone House is far more than a retelling as much as it reads as far more than a simple short story. There is a freshness here that speaks to immigrant family culture, lesbian desires, and a ghostly hope that brings us to a new ending that plays the reader’s heartstrings like a violin. There is excellent thematic motifs with water—water that is life giving but also ‘can raft my bones and colonize them with rot’—or its absence. The desert drains, the people have fake flowers, the people ‘don’t want anything that dies for real.’ However, death cannot be escaped, though in dodging it we often wonder ‘what have I lost to live?’ Brilliantly told and as haunting as the home in which the ghosts inhabit, Bone House is an impeccable tale.
5/5
‘Come tether us together, come flood us a future.’
July 1, 2021
given the chance, i would read k-ming chang’s grocery list
April 2, 2022
A sensual, perfect jewel of a novelette. It's been a while since something really made me gnash my teeth and wish I could write prose like *that*, but BONE HOUSE did it.
July 26, 2025
Visceral, vivid, lonely, and haunted
Round up to 5 stars. Visceral, vivid, lonely, and haunted. This sapphic Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights accomplishes a tremendous amount in less than 30 pages.
Round up to 5 stars. Visceral, vivid, lonely, and haunted. This sapphic Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights accomplishes a tremendous amount in less than 30 pages.
September 1, 2021
Note to self: Read Wuthering Heights before reading this. And do it by early 2022. OK, thank you, me.
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10/23 Update: I am finally reading Wuthering Heights!
—————————
I began this a day after finishing Wuthering Heights as Brontë's classic serves as a basis for Chang's chapbook of mini-stories (a queer, modernized, pseudo-retelling of WH put out by micropress Bull City as part of their quarterly Inch magazine, which focuses on the work of a single writer in each issue). Even though it's an incredibly slim read, this is one where I think reading the reference novel is probably essential for enjoying it to the full extent. Chang leans heavily into the haunting aspect of the original, adding a different cultural/sexuality/gender twist, but creating her own contemporarily gothic atmosphere in rather lyrical fashion. Quite enjoyable and powerful enough to make me seek out Chang's full-length novels.
—————————
10/23 Update: I am finally reading Wuthering Heights!
—————————
I began this a day after finishing Wuthering Heights as Brontë's classic serves as a basis for Chang's chapbook of mini-stories (a queer, modernized, pseudo-retelling of WH put out by micropress Bull City as part of their quarterly Inch magazine, which focuses on the work of a single writer in each issue). Even though it's an incredibly slim read, this is one where I think reading the reference novel is probably essential for enjoying it to the full extent. Chang leans heavily into the haunting aspect of the original, adding a different cultural/sexuality/gender twist, but creating her own contemporarily gothic atmosphere in rather lyrical fashion. Quite enjoyable and powerful enough to make me seek out Chang's full-length novels.
July 3, 2021
K-Ming Chang’s Bone House is a thing set down and a thing lifted, a thing out of place yet also the thing that is already an only belonging, that pulls a room from another room. If one feels named after the name they were given, this is why. Chang’s language seems both imbued and evacuated, ghosted and gathered. The story itself, the stories themselves: is and are. I don’t know. As for the story in these, our imperceptible ask: it is worded the way we’ve wished it told. The survived unshareable, the return that gives longing an end date, the romance that pearls possession from a cloned twin. And still this all becomes the first we’ve heard of it, a retelling of the offhandedly internal.
June 11, 2023
“Some desires are only legible in the dark.”
This sapphic Taiwanese-American reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Wuthering Heights written by K-Ming Chang (Bestiary) is SO beautiful and SO heartbreaking and my heart, mind, and soul are not the same as they were 26 pages ago.
Absolutely in love with Bull City Press’s INCH series. TYSM to Rita bunny for the recommendation <333
This sapphic Taiwanese-American reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Wuthering Heights written by K-Ming Chang (Bestiary) is SO beautiful and SO heartbreaking and my heart, mind, and soul are not the same as they were 26 pages ago.
Absolutely in love with Bull City Press’s INCH series. TYSM to Rita bunny for the recommendation <333
July 29, 2021
Beautiful 👏🏼 haunting 👏🏼 surprising👏🏼 if I could give it a 6 out of 5, I would. I’m pretty sure K-Ming Chang is god.
October 1, 2024
Poetic & pointed…yet elusive? An interesting queer ghost story that both made sense and made no sense at all. Weird girl lit fic for SURE.
November 9, 2024
She amazes me every time
December 4, 2022
Gorgeous and haunting pieces. Loved seeing the connections to Wuthering Heights and where it diverged. The prose is memorable, striking and incredibly saturated with imagery. Will be reading more of the INCH series, keeping it on my radar!
December 27, 2023
when I die, you will find K-Ming Chang's books clutched to my chest. even then, you will never be able to pry them out of my hands.
I read her work and I can't help but kneel down and smash my head on the sidewalk in reverence for her brilliance. I felt like my eyes were boiling and all other writing became irrelevant to me while reading this.
I read her work and I can't help but kneel down and smash my head on the sidewalk in reverence for her brilliance. I felt like my eyes were boiling and all other writing became irrelevant to me while reading this.
July 2, 2025
“Cathy come back…Cathy come wearing a river like a loose necktie, come tether us together, come flood us a future.”
first experience with this author and it couldn’t have been better. obsessed with the wuthering heights of it all mixed with the queer and taiwanese life. definitely going to check out more of their work cause the prose did so much with so few pages
first experience with this author and it couldn’t have been better. obsessed with the wuthering heights of it all mixed with the queer and taiwanese life. definitely going to check out more of their work cause the prose did so much with so few pages
June 29, 2025
”Another word for lesbian is: devourer of the dark.”
November 18, 2021
First, I have to give a shoutout to the stunning, bloody cover of this chapbook. Written in brief, textured, vivid chunks, like bold swatches of paint, Chang retells Wuthering Heights as a queer, Taiwanese-American story. I could read it again and again, just to splash around in the language. Bone House itself is an old butcher’s home, and reading this kind of feels like getting stuck on a meat hook, writhing in the characters’ relationships. In a good way.
This review was originally published on my blog.
This review was originally published on my blog.
September 3, 2024
Loooooved everything about this 🤩. Made me want to reread Wuthering Heights~
CWs
abandoned baby, racism, talk of butchered animals, child abuse, body horror, physical violence, asphyxiation, blood, mention of menstruation, injury/injury detail, alcohol use, judgement about incontinence, dehydration, death, ableist language, suicidal ideation, abandonment, sexual content, fire
CWs
abandoned baby, racism, talk of butchered animals, child abuse, body horror, physical violence, asphyxiation, blood, mention of menstruation, injury/injury detail, alcohol use, judgement about incontinence, dehydration, death, ableist language, suicidal ideation, abandonment, sexual content, fire
June 29, 2026
This was super short, but there were so many great details that it almost felt like a full fledged story. I was still left with many questions, but it was nonetheless a satisfying read.
An unnamed narrator moves in Bone House, a former butcher’s house, and gets to know Cathy and Millet. Both live at Bone House, only one is still alive.
An unnamed narrator moves in Bone House, a former butcher’s house, and gets to know Cathy and Millet. Both live at Bone House, only one is still alive.
August 28, 2021
i took my time to savor this and it was worth it
September 1, 2021
how is every single sentence so unique and beautiful!
September 23, 2021
Transfixing, with great image systems and delicate, poetic prose. Highly recommended bath reading. Can be consumed in a single bathing session.
September 29, 2021
Mesmerizing, poetic prose.
April 10, 2022
Whoa. I was not prepared for that. And I’m glad I wasn’t!
October 16, 2023
the way language is play doh to k-ming chang will forever be the object of my envy
February 20, 2024
can confirm that lesbians are devourers of the dark 👍🏻
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2024
gay and uncanny?? we love to see it
August 9, 2024
This is the stuff. It had me at "queer Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights", honestly.
The writing is stunning and strange and I may have to read it again immediately.
The writing is stunning and strange and I may have to read it again immediately.
September 28, 2024
is she the most brilliant author of our time? I say yes.
June 8, 2025
Beautifully creepy and bizarre. I loved the imagery and imagine so many scenes would make incredible art paintings.
January 28, 2023
i have the pleasure to be using this chapbook for a project in my writing class. it’s an incredible work from the first read, but being able to look so deeply into the language and symbols has been the most fun i’ve had reading in a long time. i love this lil chapbook. chang is an amazing writer!!
January 4, 2024
rip my heart out would ya?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews