My Good Son — Yang Huang

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.


Yang Huang grew up in Yangzhou, China. Through her writing, she explores the complexities of the Chinese and Chinese-American experience, focusing on the period beginning with the 1989 student uprisings, of which she took part, to contemporary times. Her linked story collection, My Old Faithful, won the Juniper Prize for fiction, and her debut novel, Living Treasures, won the Nautilus Book Award silver metal in fiction. She works for the University of California, Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two sons. 


"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