“These dazzling stories interrogate the fractures, collisions and glorious new alloys of what it means to be a Chinese millennial.”—Adam Johnson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Orphan Master’s Son
Named One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019 by Nylon, Electric Literature, The Millions, and LitHub • An Elle Best Book of Spring
In dexterous, electric prose, the twelve stories in Xuan Juliana Wang’s first collection reveal the new face of a generation of Chinese youth.
Her characters stand at the threshold of bold and uncertain futures, navigating between their heritage and the chaos of contemporary life. In a crowded apartment on Mott Street, an immigrant family raises its first real Americans. At the Beijing Olympics, a pair of synchronized divers stands poised at the edge of success and self-discovery. And in New York, a father creates an algorithm to troubleshoot the problem of raising a daughter born into a world so different from his own.
From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) and livestream stars to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, these stories upend the well-worn immigrant narrative to reveal a new experience of belonging: of young people testing the limits of who they are and who they will one day become, in a world as vast and varied as their ambitions.
Praise for Home Remedies
"Artful, funny, generous and empathetic . . . Xuan Juliana Wang is a radiant new talent.”—Lauren Groff
“Spectacular . . . Wang has cherry-picked from disparate worlds and engineered a whole new, sublimely captivating one.”—Vogue
“Remarkable . . . Wang captures the strivings and uncertainty of Chinese youth establishing themselves in America and beyond. . . . [A] deft, striking debut.”—New York Observer, “Spring 2019 Must-Read Books”
“Filled with characters who mirror the chaos and anxiety, exhilaration and despair, desire and fear of the world around them, Home Remedies offers searing portraits of millennial Chinese immigrants. . . . Wang’s shimmering words offer proof that even the most mundane of these lives have the potential to become something extraordinary. . . . A great, explosive talent.”—Nylon, “Best New Books of May”