About this Event
Bel Canto Books is delighted to host Juli Min, author of SHANGHAILANDERS in conversation with Belinda Huijuan Tang, A MAP FOR THE MISSING.
Kindly RSVP so we can plan accordingly. Please stay home if you feel sick.
This event will be held indoors at KUBO LB (3976 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach CA).
EVENT SCHEDULE
5:45PM - Event check-in begins
6:00pm - Welcome & event start
6:15-7:00pm - Author reading, conversation, and Q&A
7:00pm-8:00pm - Book signing & shopping time
8:00pm - Event ends
ABOUT THE BOOK
A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time—beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past—exploring their secrets, their losses, and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.
2040: Wealthy real estate investor Leo Yang—handsome, distinguished, a real Shanghai man—is on the train back to the city after seeing his family off at the airport. His sophisticated Japanese-French wife, Eko, and their two eldest children, Yumi and Yoko, are headed for Boston, though one daughter’s revelation will soon reroute them to Paris. 2039: Kiko, their youngest daughter and an aspiring actress, decides to pursue fame at any cost, like her icon Marilyn Monroe. 2038: Yumi comes to Yoko in need, after a college-dorm situation at Harvard goes disastrously wrong.
As the years rewind to 2014, Shanghailanders brings readers into the shared and separate lives of the Yang family parent by parent, daughter by daughter, and through the eyes of the people in their orbit—a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, and a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present. We glimpse a future where the city’s waters rise and the specter of apocalypse is never far off. But in Juli Min’s hands, we also see that whatever may change, universal constants remain: love is complex, life is not fair, and family will always be stubbornly connected by blood, secrets, and longing.
Brilliantly constructed and achingly resonant, Shanghailanders is an unforgettable exploration of marriage, relationships, and the layered experience of time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juli Min is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. She studied Russian and comparative literature at Harvard University, and she holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson. She was the founding editor of the Shanghai Literary Review and served as its fiction editor from 2016 to 2023. Her first novel, Shanghailanders, will be published in May 2024 by Spiegel & Grau (US) and Dialogue Books (UK). Translations are also forthcoming in Japanese, Spanish, Norwegian, and German.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Belinda Huijuan Tang is a novelist and filmmaker from San Jose, California. She is the author of A Map for the Missing, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and one of NPR's best books of 2022. As a screenwriter, she was a 2023 Film Independent Project Involve Writing Fellow and 2024 CAPE New Writing Fellow. She holds degrees from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Stanford University, and Peking University in Beijing.
ABOUT BEL CANTO BOOKS
Founded by Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina-American poet and former hospitality executive, Bel Canto Books offers a curated selection of fiction, nonfiction and children's books, organized around a theme of the month, in particular celebrating books by women and people of color. Learn more at belcantobooks.net.
ABOUT KUBO LB
KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and Women led small businesses. KUBO LB is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more. Learn more at kubolb.com.
SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
KUBO LB, 3976 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 28.00