Michael Tang and
his sister, Emily, have both struggled to forge a sense of identity in their
parents' adopted homeland. Emily, an immigration lawyer in New York City,
baffles their mother, Ling, by refusing to have children. At twenty-six,
Michael is unable to commit to a relationship or a career--or come out to his
family. And now their father, after a lifetime of sacrifice, has passed
away.
When Michael finds a letter to his father from a
long-ago friend, he impulsively travels to China in the hopes of learning
more about a man he never really knew. In this rapidly modernizing country he
begins to understand his father's decisions, including one that reverberates
into the present day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ling and
Emily question their own choices, trying to forge a path that bends toward
new loves and fresh beginnings.
Wendy Lee's powerfully
honest novel captures the complexity of the immigrant experience, exploring
one family's hidden history, unspoken hurts, and search for a place to call
home.
Along the whitewashed mud walls are large Chinese
characters written in red, sometimes ending with an exclamation point. They
look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind of
propaganda. Go back! Michael imagines them saying, in a
private message just for him. This is a mistake! You won't find what
you're looking for!
What, or rather who, Michael
is hoping to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is
the name that is signed at the end of a letter that Michael discovered among
his father's things after the funeral. Then his mother had come into the
room, and he had put the letter in his pants pocket, where it stayed unopened
for another nine months. Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied
enough to simply know it was there.
The postmark indicated
it had been sent about a month before his father's death, from someplace in
China that he had never heard of and didn't think he knew how to pronounce.
Unfortunately, it was written in Chinese, except for one sentence toward the
end of the letter--Everything has been forgiven.
Michael Tang and
his sister, Emily, have both struggled to forge a sense of identity in their
parents' adopted homeland. Emily, an immigration lawyer in New York City,
baffles their mother, Ling, by refusing to have children. At twenty-six,
Michael is unable to commit to a relationship or a career--or come out to his
family. And now their father, after a lifetime of sacrifice, has passed
away.
When Michael finds a letter to his father from a
long-ago friend, he impulsively travels to China in the hopes of learning
more about a man he never really knew. In this rapidly modernizing country he
begins to understand his father's decisions, including one that reverberates
into the present day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Ling and
Emily question their own choices, trying to forge a path that bends toward
new loves and fresh beginnings.
Wendy Lee's powerfully
honest novel captures the complexity of the immigrant experience, exploring
one family's hidden history, unspoken hurts, and search for a place to call
home.
Along the whitewashed mud walls are large Chinese
characters written in red, sometimes ending with an exclamation point. They
look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind of
propaganda. Go back! Michael imagines them saying, in a
private message just for him. This is a mistake! You won't find what
you're looking for!
What, or rather who, Michael
is hoping to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is
the name that is signed at the end of a letter that Michael discovered among
his father's things after the funeral. Then his mother had come into the
room, and he had put the letter in his pants pocket, where it stayed unopened
for another nine months. Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied
enough to simply know it was there.
The postmark indicated
it had been sent about a month before his father's death, from someplace in
China that he had never heard of and didn't think he knew how to pronounce.
Unfortunately, it was written in Chinese, except for one sentence toward the
end of the letter--Everything has been forgiven.
