China Boy

By: Gus Lee

Narrated by: Austin Ku

“What a knockout. An incredibly rich and new voice for American literature…China Boy grabs the reader’s heart and won’t let go.”—Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club

“A fascinating, evocative portrait of the Chinese community in California in the 1950s, caught between two complex, demanding cultures.”—The New York Times Book Review

Kai Ting is the only American-born son of a Shanghai family that fled China during Mao’s revolution. Growing up in a San Francisco multicultural, low-income neighborhood, Kai is caught between two worlds—embracing neither the Chinese nor the American way of life. After his mother’s death, Kai is suddenly plunged into American culture by his stepmother, who tries to erase every vestige of China from the household.

Warm, funny and deeply moving, China Boy is a brilliantly rendered novel of family relationships, culture shock, and the perils of growing up in an America of sharp differences and shared humanity.

Critic reviews

Praise for China Boy

“What a knockout. An incredibly rich and new voice or American literature...China Boy grabs the reader’s heart and won’t let go...A wonder of a story.”—Amy Tan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club

“It would be hard to find a more all-American story than the delightful China Boy. Lee is a natural storyteller.”—TIME

“Marvelous...one small boy’s adjustment to Western culture...a pure delight.”—The Washington Post Book World

“A robust, startling book...hilariously poignant...a fascinating, evocative portrait of the Chinese community in California in the 1950s, caught between two complex, demanding cultures.”—The New York Times Book Review

struggling with this one..

it's a well written book. it's an upsetting story. should come with trigger warnings for child abuse. the narrator has been hard to listen to because he makes black characters sound like a caricature of Asians speaking bad English. I'm struggling to get through it because it's hard to know when the abuse will end if at all... my friend said she loved it so I am soldiering through. hope there's some redemption. the author deserves all the acclaim and support for telling such a difficult story.

update: I struggled through,but my opinion of the narrator didn't change. his accents for everyone were messed up. the story itself is a very difficult but triumphant story. I'm not great with violence, so it just was too hard for me...