Xuan Juliana Wang, "Home Remedies"

Xuan Juliana Wang discusses her novel, "Home Remedies", at Politics and Prose.

In her debut collection of stories, Wang writes against Crazy Rich Asians caricatures, giving a rare glimpse into the lives of Chinese millennials. Wang—a former Stegner Fellow who was born in China, grew up in Los Angeles, and returned to Beijing for two years to work as a translator—is sensitive to generational misunderstanding and to the clash between heritage and modernity. Her playful, formally innovative stories follow a wide range of characters: overworked immigrant parents alienated from their children; a spoiled member of the second-generation rich; an Olympic hopeful who abandons his career over unrequited love; and the artistic twenty-year-olds shooting subversive music videos for Beijing bands. Wang is in conversation with Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer since 2008 and author of the National Book Award-winning The Age of Ambition.

Xuan Juliana Wang was born in Heilongjiang, China, and moved to Los Angeles when she was seven years old. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She lives in California.

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Produced by Tom Warren