Cinema Love
By
Jiaming Tang
Read by
Samantha Tan
Release:
05/07/2024
Runtime:
9h 39m
Unabridged
Quantity:
Lush, romantic, daring, and filled with indelible characters, Cinema Love is not just an extraordinary debut, but a future classic. In this story of forbidden queer love and the cost of secrets, Jiaming Tang gives voice, humanity, and dignity to people so often rendered invisible by society. Here, Chinese laborers, factory workers, seamstresses, nail technicians, and cooks take glorious center stage, their lives and deepest yearnings made epic. I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t stop reading.
Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good Mothers
Winner of the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction
Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
Finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick
“Part ghost story, part love story, and part tale of hardscrabble immigrant life.” —The New Yorker
A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love.
While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
Spanning three timelines—post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York—Cinema Love is an “exceptional" and "moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.
Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction
Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
Finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick
“Part ghost story, part love story, and part tale of hardscrabble immigrant life.” —The New Yorker
A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love.
While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
Spanning three timelines—post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York—Cinema Love is an “exceptional" and "moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.
Release:
2024-05-07
Runtime:
9h 39m
Format:
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780593828083
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Praise