Cinema Love A Novel
Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang, published by Penguin on May 7, 2024, is a novel that intricately weaves together themes of love, identity, and the immigrant experience. This 304-page work explores the lives of Old Second and Bao Mei, who navigate their complex relationship against the backdrop of rural China and New York City’s Chinatown. The narrative unfolds through three timelines, revealing the characters’ struggles with intimacy and the haunting nature of their pasts.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of experiences as the story delves into the lives of gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. The novel presents a blend of ghostly elements and poignant love stories, highlighting the weight of secrets and the impact of memory on the present. With its focus on LGBTQ+ themes and Asian American experiences, Cinema Love offers a unique perspective on forbidden relationships and the challenges faced by its characters in both their homeland and adopted city.
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Winner of the Los Angeles Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction
Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
Finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick
“Part ghost story, part love story, and part tale of hardscrabble immigrant life.” —The New Yorker
A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love.
While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
Spanning three timelines—post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York—Cinema Love is an “exceptional” and “moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.
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