Nothing to My Name

A Novel

By: Kangkang Li Kovacs

Inspired by the author’s own family history, and spanning the past hundred years of Chinese history, this multi-generational family saga explores how women survive the tsunamis of history

Nothing to My Name chronicles the intertwined fates of three generations of Chinese women: Ah Xue, Mimosa, and Fei. The Grandmother, Ah Xue, witnesses the rise of the Communist Revolution while earning a meager living combing the hair of the few wealthy ladies in her small fishing village. Mimosa, the Mother, grows up in the shadow of her parents’ struggles as the growing tension of the Cultural Revolution threatens to pull their family apart. And Fei Fei, the Daughter, brought up as a “boy” by her activist father, grapples with gender identity in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Awash in the tides of societal upheaval, Ah Xue, Mimosa, and Fei Fei are all driven by the instinct to survive, weathering hardship that splinters the boundary between the personal and the political. For readers of sweeping upmarket book club fiction like Pachinko and Homegoing, Nothing to My Name is a braided history of suffering and dignity, of loss and reckoning, and of the unexpected joy that sustains family bonds.