About this item
"Exceptional, moving, and not to be missed." - Alice Hoffman "Gentle and fierce, heartbreaking without sacrificing its sense of humor . . . I have never read anything like it." - Robert Jones, Jr. . 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.
About the Author
Jiaming Tang is a queer immigrant writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. He is an Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction, and his stories and essays have been published in AGNI, Lit Hub, Joyland Magazine, and elsewhere. CINEMA LOVE is his first book. Jiaming is also serving as a judge for the 2023 Restless Books Nonfiction Prize for New Immigrant Writing and he was formerly the nonfiction editor at Black Warrior Review.
