Belinda Huijuan Tang is a 2021 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She holds a BA from Stanford University and was a 2019 work-study fellow at the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lived in China from 2016 to 2018 and, while there, received an MA from Peking University in Beijing. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
"Engrossing." -The New York Times Book Review
"Poignant and emotionally complex, Tang beautifully delivers a
memorable tale." -Buzzfeed
"Sweeping . . . As [Yitian] searches for his father, he reconnects
with old friends, reopens old wounds and seeks to find not just his
father but a better sense of his place in the family he left behind
for America." -The Washington Post
"[A] far-reaching and impactful debut novel . . . Tang's vibrant,
stirring descriptions of Communist China during the Cultural
Revolution and its aftermath . . . grip, transport and beguile. . .
. The sections involving Yitian's complicated family life . . . are
to be savored . . . and the dominant narrative-one loosely based on
a story at the center of her own family's past-is wholehearted and
sensitively drawn. I can't wait to see what she writes next."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"[This] novel soars . . . Tang's prose is elegant and precise . . .
As past and present heartbreaks collide, Tang delineates with care
her characters' dreams for themselves and sometimes conflicting
hopes for their families. Shifting back and forth between the late
1970s and early 1990s, A Map for the Missing is a vivid portrait of
this period of rapid change in Chinese society." -Minneapolis
Star Tribune
"Gorgeous . . . devastating . . . Belinda Huijuan Tang's debut
spins an emotional story set in a post-Cultural Revolution China.
Exploring questions of cultural identity and the scars immigration
can leave on a family over decades, Tang's novel is drawn from a
true story at the center of her own family's past." -Apartment
Therapy
"In this spectacular debut, Tang places an everyman at the center
of her narrative and traces his unease with himself and the larger
world . . . A breathtaking portrait of the regret that can forever
shape a life when someone helplessly sticks to the path of least
resistance." -Booklist (starred review)
"Splendid . . . It's astonishing that A Map for the Missing
is Tang's debut novel . . . gripping from its first page to its
last." -BookPage
"[An] ambitious debut novel . . . Themes of family and forgiveness
against the sweep of political foment inform this epic . . . A
Map for the Missing finds a math professor returning from the
United States to his native China on a pilgrimage of
multigenerational discovery." -Kirkus
"[An] exquisite novel . . . remarkable . . . a gentle, detailed
reveal of life-marking experiences; a time of hunger, both physical
and intellectual in nature, of rejection and loss; and of
unexpected love and healing forgiveness." -Shelf
Awareness
"Belinda Huijuan Tang's debut novel is a beautifully drawn,
sensitively rendered portrait of a man desperately searching for
his father-and for reconnection to the past and people he once knew
and loved. Both rich in historical detail and timeless in scope, A
Map for the Missing explores the costs of choosing your own path,
whether what's left behind can ever be retrieved, and whether it is
possible to forgive the wounds we inevitably inflict on each
other." -Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author
of Little Fires Everywhere
"Belinda Huijuan Tang's immersive debut transports readers between
rural China and urban centers; the past and present; what could
have been and what is. It is a powerful and captivating examination
of love, identity, home, and the forks in the road that stay with
us. Bringing to vivid life an era that merits more attention in
western literature, A Map for the Missing harkens the arrival of a
talented new author." -Qian Julie Wang, New York Times
bestselling author of Beautiful Country
"An engrossing saga of a young mathematician caught between two
countries, two cultures, two eras, and two loves. Set against the
violent turmoil of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this powerful
debut explores the wrenching impact of political ideologies on
individual lives in a way that is resonant and timely." -Ruth
Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness and A Tale for the
Time Being
"A Map for the Missing is a propulsive, lush novel that pulled
me in from the first page and never let go. At once heartbreaking
and hopeful, Belinda Huijuan Tang's epic debut takes us on a man's
desperate search to reconnect with what he's lost, to rediscover
what he's forgotten. I loved this novel." -Angie Kim, author of
Miracle Creek
"Exquisite and precise, A Map for the Missing tracks two lovers,
pulled across years and nations, who never stop longing for each
other. It is stunning. Belinda Huijuan Tang crafts her story with
all the tenderness, specificity, and vision of a god making a
planet. The world she builds in these pages is one you won't ever
want to leave." -Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing
Earth
"Belinda Huijuan Tang's magical debut epitomizes both meanings of
tenderness, in the palpable love it shows for its characters, and
by its sensitive exploration of their wounds, inflicted by self and
time and social milieu. A Map for the Missing is sharply etched and
lovingly rendered." -Nawaaz Ahmed, author of Radiant
Fugitives, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction
"Belinda Huijuan Tang has delivered a polymathic, ambitious, and
assured debut. All at once, A Map for the Missing manages to be a
haunting intergenerational mystery, a poetic rumination on loss,
and an epic tale of love disappeared and rediscovered. With
propulsive yet patient prose, Tang nimbly examines the way grand
historical tides converge with small turns of chance to add up to a
life. This novel invites us to think anew about language,
education, regret, migration, and the myriad ways political
change-winds upend our best-laid plans. A Map for the Missing does
not read like a first novel-it's a mature and wise feat of realism
from a writer already in total control of her craft." -Sanjena
Sathian, author of Gold Diggers
"A wonderful, accomplished debut, written with wisdom and
compassion. The private dignity of Tang's characters is
breathtaking, her sense of time and place patient and true. I am
full of admiration." -Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
"A Map for the Missing is a sure-footed, deeply-considered
novel that pulls the reader in with its urgency from the outset.
Through this narrative of love, familial duty, the costs of
charting one's own path and the enduring allure of paths not taken,
Belinda Huijuan Tang proves herself to be the best kind of
storyteller: one who writes with heart and courage." -Angela
Flournoy, author of The Turner House, finalist for the
National Book Award
"A Map for the Missing gives vivid life to the uncanny truths of
return, reunion, and time. A simple mystery-a father who has
vanished-forcefully animates the story, but what casts a spell over
readers and makes this novel so memorable is the attention, both
loving and piercing, with which the author regards her characters.
Belinda Huijuan Tang's debut is vigorous and deft, intricate and
precise." -Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man,
finalist for the National Book Award
"A stunning debut full of vivid writing, A Map for the Missing
reminds you of exactly why we read in the first place. Through the
expertly drawn and utterly original characters of Yitian and
Hanwen, Belinda Huijuan Tang confronts how history, mobility,
memory, and desire all intertwine in our perpetual search for
peace. From the campus of an elite American university to the
countryside of Cultural Revolutionary China, Tang confidently and
artfully paints a complex and vast world that is both ethereal and
familiar, characters concurrently exacting and reckless. The result
is a novel that explores the bittersweetness of returns and the
ultimate healing behind coming home." -Xochitl Gonzalez, author
of Olga Dies Dreaming
"With lean, musical prose, Belinda Huijuan Tang has written a
stunning debut about family, belonging and love. I will be thinking
about these characters for a long time." -De'Shawn Charles
Winslow, author of In West
Mills
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