My new novel Oasis, a love story set in modern China from 1976 to 1992 amidst climate change, won the Cai Emmons Fiction Award and is forthcoming from the Red Hen Press on April 13, 2027.
Kaier has carried a torch for Lou since he rescued her from a flash flood when they were children. Kaier is a bright, ambitious child but in rural China she is expected to help at home, raise her younger brothers, and be the best in school. She battles for her education until one tragic day when her baby brother wanders out into an oncoming dust storm, Kaier runs into the storm to save him and makes herself desperately ill.
Kaier’s time in a hospital fuels her ambition to be a doctor and when Lou seems more interested in her beautiful cousin than he is in her, she dives headfirst into life in Nanjing, the large coastal city where she can pursue her university degree. When Lou’s wife becomes sick with myeloma, Kaier needs to decide if she’s willing to help her or does she want Lou for herself. Oasis explores the power of devotion, both to those we love and those places we first called home.
“This powerful and unforgettable story of the sacrifices we make when we choose between two widely divergent worlds will stay with me for a long, long time.”
—Alka Joshi, author of The Henna Artist and the Jaipur Trilogy
“Yang Huang’s novel, rich and wide-ranging, illuminates many themes, but at its heart is a love story you won’t soon forget.”
—Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History
“By turns searing and tender, Yang Huang’s Oasis is an epic that spans decades of social and political transformation in China, sweeping across the deserts of Gansu to the bustle of Nanjing to the shores of Hainan. Kaier is an unforgettable heroine, whose journey exemplifies the survival, heartbreak, and the courage necessary to claim your own destiny. A triumph.”
—Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City and Coyoteland
MY GOOD SON: Winner of the UNO Publishing Lab Prize
“Provocative, funny, charming, Huang’s novel takes on the challenges of this moment of sexual politics with affection and honesty.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“As with her previous books, ‘Living Treasures’ and ‘My Old Faithful,’ Huang’s latest explores the generational push-pull of family life in post-Tiananmen China . . . Mr. Cai remains front and center, always compelling, a man doing everything for his boy, the way a good father — supposedly — should.”
My OLD FAITHFUL: Winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction
University of Massachusetts Press
"My Old Faithful zooms readers straight into the minds and hearts of each member of a middle-class family in a struggling, censored, restricted China. . . . Customary want, state-imposed strictures and impetuous generosity play out against beautifully painted landscapes and seasons. . . . we feel ourselves becoming each protagonist in the course of each story."
Publisher: Harvard Square Editions
"The personal and the political merge in Yang Huang's debut novel about a college student in post-Cultural Revolution China. Gu Bao negotiates the shifting landscape of a country still struggling toward modernity, as China's education system, family planning policies and the deaths of her fellow students in Tiananmen Square sometimes push her to desperate measures. The story moves from city life to the rural home of Bao's grandparents, acquiring an epic feel in a compact length."