Lan Samantha Chang crafts narratives that explore the intricate interplay of culture and the search for belonging. Her stories delve into themes of family, heritage, and assimilation, revealing a profound understanding of the human experience. Chang employs a precise and lyrical prose style to illuminate her characters and their inner lives. Her writing is characterized by subtle psychological depth and a strong sense of place and history.
In "Inheritance," set in 1931, sisters Junan and Yinan vow to stay together after their mother's suicide. Their bond is tested when Junan enters an arranged marriage and falls for her soldier husband. As war separates them, Junan's choice to send Yinan after him leads to themes of betrayal and trust across generations.
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last. Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead—presumed murdered—and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens—and the family dog meets an unexpected fate—Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival. Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
A modern classic of American fiction: a haunting collection of stories that explore the lost loves and complex desires of Chinese-American immigrant families
The characters who inhabit this extraordinary fictional debut are caught between the burden of their past history and the fragility of their unchartered future. Hunger illuminates how first-generation immigrants from China, culturally and emotionally uprooted from their homeland, mistrust connection even as they hunger for attachment — and how the past affects and shapes their children. In luminous prose, these moving stories of love and loss explore the profound and painful ties between husband and wife, parent and child, sister and sister. The stunning title novella is told by a woman whose love for an exiled musician compels her into a tragic marriage in which her husband's unfulfilled desires nearly destroy their children. In other stories, a ghost seduces a young girl into a flooded river; a mother commands a daughter to avenge her father's death. Lan Samantha Chang weaves the forces of war and magic, food and desire, ghosts and family, into haunting tales. Again and again, Chang asks the question: is love not a kind of burden, stifling and terrifying in the choices and responsibilities it forces on us? And yet we yearn for it, define ourselves by our experience of it, cannot live without it.
Die anrührende Geschichte einer tragischen Liebe – und zugleich ein fesselndes Porträt von drei Generationen von Frauen. Hangzhou in den 20er Jahren. Hier wachsen die beiden Schwestern Junan und Yinan heran, die von Kindesbeinen an unzertrennlich sind. Als Junan ins heiratsfähige Alter kommt, entschließt sie sich, die Werbung des jungen Offiziers Li Ang zu erhören. Doch als der Zweite Weltkrieg ausbricht, wird Li Ang in eine weit entfernte Stadt versetzt. Junan, die ihren Mann über alles liebt, ist verzweifelt über die Trennung. Aus Angst, Li Ang an eine andere Frau zu verlieren, schickt sie ihm ihre Schwester Yinan als Begleiterin – und kann doch nicht ahnen, dass sie das Schicksal damit auf tragische Weise herausfordert …