Belinda Huijuan Tang

In [A Map for the Missing], a 30 year old Chinese immigrant to America gets a call from his mother, who is back in his small home town in China, that his father has gone missing. Yitian leaves his American life, that he is still adapting to, for his first visit back home in 15 years. When he gets there, he starts to relive some painful moments from his teenage years, including the death of his older brother and his conflicts with his father. Most of this action takes place in the late 1970s, show more during the end of the Cultural Revolution. Yitian was one of the few young people to pass the gaokao, a test to be placed in the Chinese university system. One of his female friends, Hanwen, who he had a budding romance with does not pass the test. While Yitian is back looking for his father, he also reconnects with Hanwen.

While I loved hearing more about China during this time period and the book seemed well-researched, I felt there was too much going on. There were too many of Yitian's relationships being explored and I felt pulled in a lot of directions. This book was a great concept, but the execution was only ok. show less

I enjoyed Belinda Huijuan Tang’s debut novel Map for the Missing on so many levels. The wonderful characters and the complicated choices the characters must make. The deeper revelation about life in China under the Cultural Revolution. Learning family secrets that alter one’s perception. The story has young love and loss, dreams fulfilled and acceptance of the life one has, and most powerful of all, it is a story of resilience and survival in a shifting political climate.

The Cultural show more Revolution in China turned lives upside down. Young girls from the city were sent to villages to work in the fields. A sent-down girl, Tian Hanwen, meets a peasant boy, Tang Yitian, who shares her love of books and dreams of an education. The unlikely pair form a deep bond. They study together, sure they will both be accepted into university.

The Yitian’s father angrily belittles him, for his own father was a denounced scholar, and without any manual skills is a mere drain on the household. The oldest son accepts that he will work the land but secretly helps his brother go to the city and take the tests for university. There, he contacts a disease that kills him. Their father cannot forgive Yitian for that death. When Yitian wins a coveted spot at university, he leaves home and does not return for fifteen years. He wins a scholarship to study in America for his PhD., taking along a wife.

Left behind is the girl he loved, his mentor and fellow in preparing for the exams. Hanwen did not win a coveted spot at university; she marries the assistant mayor and lives in luxury.

Yitian’s mother calls, franticly explaining that his father is missing. He returns to China to help. He sees the changes, the televisions in every house, but also encounters a corrupt and ineffective police system. He turns to Hanwen to see if her husband can help. They must contend with old feelings and choices.

With ever deepening layers to the story, we learn of Yitian’s mother’s strength and of his father and brother’s affliction.

Ultimately, Yitian must forgive himself and his father, and he and Hanwen come to terms with the lives they have.

This thoughtful novel will appeal to readers of historical fiction, women’s fiction, and family dramas.

I received a free book through First Look Book Club. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Tang Yitian lives in America with his wife, but he struggles to fit in. When his mother calls from China to tell him that his father has disappeared, Tang travels back to help, and we begin to unravel his family’s complicated history. Belinda Huijuan Tang’s novel A Map For the Missing explores difficult large topics of Chinese history through the intimate stories of a family. Her excellent writing weaves complicated themes of forgiveness, grief, and immigration with the political show more examination of Chinese politics. A Map For the Missing is an excellent choice for readers who enjoy literary fiction and authors like Min Jin Lee and Lisa See. show less

fiction, family drama, Chinese history (late 1970s-1990s).

A Bay Area math professor is called home to his family village in Anhui Province after some 15 years' absence when his father leaves home and disappears without telling anyone where he's going.

I really liked this, the way we see a little of each character, the tendency for Yitien to use math to graph his feelings out in his head. The narratives go back and forth between the past (Yitien taking the national exam to get chosen to study show more at university) and the more recent 1993 (when he is looking for his dad and trying to get the local police to help). show less