Yang Huang grew up in Yangzhou, China. Through her writing, she explores the complexities of the Chinese and Chinese-American experience, focusing on the period beginning with the 1989 student uprisings, of which she took part, to contemporary times.
Her new novel Oasis, a love story set in modern China from 1976 to 1992 amidst climate change, won the inaugural Cai Emmons Fiction Award and will be published by the Red Hen Press in spring 2027.
Her novel My Good Son won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. Her linked story collection, My Old Faithful, won the Juniper Prize for fiction, and her debut novel, Living Treasures, won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal in fiction.
The following are selected essays, stories, and interviews.
Personal Essays
Why I Write - Boston College Magazine
My humble beginning from growing up in China to coming to America and writing novels in English. Read a companion essay: Why I Write in English.
Yang Huang Recommends - Poets & Writers
I explain how I balance the duties of being a mother, wife, and engineer with the work of being a writer. "When it's time for my creative endeavor, mostly on the weekends, I go to the cave. It is just my desk behind a closed door, but it's the place where I permit myself to be a writer."
Why I Write in English - The Margins
People have often asked me why I write in English. I chose English as my first language to write realistic fiction. Here is my confession: "Wanting privacy in a police state was sheer stupidity"—to tell the stories of my life in China without the threat of censorship, I had to look beyond Mandarin. Read a companion essay: Why I Write.
Craft Essays
Beyond 20 Drafts - The Millions
“Compared to nonfiction, a novel may require more drafts and take longer to get right. Writing a novel is a unique challenge, rather like birthing a brainchild: each book is different and needs as long as it takes.”
Yang Huang on George Eliot’s Middlemarch: Owning up - The Marvelous Paragraph Project
How George Eliot’s Middlemarch changed the way I think about reckoning in fiction: “When a person owns up to their decision, they have the potential to evolve beyond where punishment can befall them.”
Yang Huang Interviews Feng - Women Writers, Women’s Books
I wrote a sort of mini-sequel by time-traveling to the UT Austin campus in 1991 to interview Feng. No one suspected that I was the author arriving on the scene. Feng and I flirted a bit as a creator and brainchild.
Family Perils: A Conversation with Yang Huang and Kirstin Chen - The Margins
I talked with my fellow writer, Kirstin Chen, about histories of the Cultural revolution, betrayal, and the importance of craft.
Yang’s Book Lists
The Best Books on China’s One-child Policy and Tiananmen Square Protests - Shepherd
On this 33rd anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests, I shared several of my favorite books on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests, traumatic events that reshaped China forever.
How Cultural Forces Shape Parenting around the World - Pocket
I explore how parents around the globe approach risk-taking, motivation, toilet training, and more.
Berkeleyside’s Favorite Books of 2021 - Berkeleyside
I named several books that inspired and sustained me during this difficult time.
My Good Son: A Selected Bibliography - The Seminary Co-op
I shared and commented on the books that helped me write My Good Son, a novel about the power and cost of parental love.
Stories
A Parent’s Love - Bloom Magazine
Like many of his generation, the most fervent desire of Mr. Cai, a tailor in post-Tiananmen China, is for his only son, Feng, to succeed. Excerpted from the opening chapter of My Good Son.
“The Gourmet” - Taste
In this short story, a woman pays her parents a visit in southern China and brings a friend along. Excerpted from My Old Faithful.
"My Old Faithful" - Los Angeles Review of Books, China Channel
The botany of a marriage. Excerpted from My Old Faithful.
"The Umbrella" - Literary Hub
"The Umbrella" tells a story how a father picks a favorite child against his better judgement and tries to make up for all his previous failings as a parent. Excerpted from My Old Faithful.