My Good Son
Description
From award-winning author Yang Huang, My Good Son explores the power-and the cost-of parental love. A tailor in post-Tiananmen China, Mr. Cai has one ambition: for his son, Feng, to make something of himself. With harsh discipline and relentless pressure, Mr. Cai succeeds in getting Feng ready to attend a U.S. college, but Feng needs a sponsor. When Mr. Cai meets a closeted American art student named Jude, they hatch a plan to benefit them both: get Feng to the US and help Jude come out to his conservative father. Their scheme will expose the fault lines in both Chinese and American cultures-father-son relationships, familial expectations, gender and sexuality, social status and mobility. Huang's writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of family relationships amidst two rapidly changing cultures.
Reviews
"...the novel’s beating heart: what it means to be a good parent or, in Mr. Cai’s case, a good Chinese father."
—Lysley Tenorio, The New York Times Sunday Book Review
"Yang Huang weaves her story with great patience and a steady hand. Her compassion for her characters is matched only by her sharp, unrelenting narrative eye, one which draws the reader deeply into the growing complications of Mr. Cai's world. An engrossing and compelling novel."
—Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy
"My Good Son is a novel as moving and absorbing as it is thought-provoking. What does it mean to be a good father? At what cost—to his family, the wider society, the child himself—should a devoted father arrange for his son to 'get ahead'? Yang Huang's novel is at once a beautifully specific portrait of one small family in post-Tiananmen China and a morally complex, compassionate exploration of universal themes."
—Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point
"Set in post-Tiananmen China, My Good Son proves, yet again, Yang Huang's gift for weaving poignant family dramas with grand social themes—and thoroughly upending the reader's expectations! I was both riveted and moved from start to finish."
—Elizabeth Evans, author of As Good As Dead
Author Bio
Yang Huang grew up in Yangzhou, China and has lived in the United States since 1990. Her linked story collection, My Old Faithful, won the Juniper Prize for fiction. Her debut novel, Living Treasures, won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal in fiction. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two teenage sons and works for the University of California, Berkeley.
