Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
for literature that confronts racism and examines diversity
Winner of the 2017 Chautauqua Prize
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
A New York Times Notable Book
"Riveting and luminous...Like the best books, this one haunts the
reader well after the end."--Jesmyn Ward
"[A] complex, beautiful novel . . . Stunning."--NPR, Best Books of
2016
"Intense and dreamlike . . . filled with quiet resonances across
time."--The New Yorker
Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts
American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines
the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family
experience.
Inhabiting four lives--a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites
an explosion in Chinese labor; Hollywood's first Chinese movie star; a
hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes the Asian American community;
and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption--this novel
captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even
as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive--as much
through love as blood.
"A prophetic work, with passages of surpassing beauty."--Joyce Carol
Oates, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award citation
"A poignant, cascading four-part novel . . . Outstanding."--David
Mitchell, Guardian
"The most honest, unflinching, cathartically biting novel I've read
about the Chinese American experience."--Celeste Ng
