I read Sarah Wang’s debut novel New Skin while still contemplating my own escape from postpartum depression. I call it escape because the mental gymnastics I had to perform to endure the asylum that was my mind—which involved blocking my own mother’s capricious “care”—in order to survive my ordeal was nothing short of miraculous. Like Linli’s mother, Fanny, my mother is obsessed with and conscious of beauty and society’s standards and aesthetics, though unlike Fanny, she is not obsessed with plastic surgery. Needless to say, I found in this novel a reflection of an often invisible view of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship, built on Fanny’s concept of motherhood. As she says, “mothers must always be a slave to their children.” She even adds, “There is no way out. You think I don’t wish for a way out everyday?” New Skin is a satirical exploration of the obsession with the beauty industry, particularly with cosmetic surgery.…