Today, I’m recommending The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang. Hailed by Amazon as one of the Best Books of 2016 and selected as an Editor’s Choice title by the New York Times, debut author Jade Chang has crafted an outrageously funny yet uninhibited family story about what it means to belong in America.
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he’s just been ruined by the 2008 financial crisis. Forced to pull his kids out of schools he can no longer afford, Charles, his son Andrew, the aspiring stand-up comic, teenage daughter Grace, an avid fashion blogger, and Barbra, their stepmother, embark on a cross-country road trip from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the upstate New York hideout of eldest daughter and disgraced art world it-girl Saina.
All he wants to do is get his kids safely stowed away, so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim the family’s ancestral lands—and his pride. But with his son waylaid by a temptress in New Orleans, his wife ready to defect for a set of 1,000-thread-count sheets, and an epic car crash in North Carolina, Charles may have to choose between the old world and the new, between keeping his family intact and fulfilling his dream of starting anew in China.
Chang’s quirky, flawed characters and witty comedic observations make this novel one epic road trip you won’t soon forget.
Check out The Wangs vs. the World and other engaging family sagas like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
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