Transplants - by Daniel Tam-Claiborne (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A harrowing and poignant novel following two young women in pursuit of kinship and self-discovery who yearn to survive in a world that doesn't know where either of them belong.

On a university campus in rural Qixian, Lin and Liz make an improbable pair: Lin, a Chinese student closer to her menagerie of pets than to her peers, and Liz, a Chinese American teacher grieving her mother's sudden death. They're each met with hostility--Lin by her classmates, who mock her for dating a white foreigner; Liz by her fellow English teachers, who exploit their privilege--and forge an unlikely friendship.

After a startling betrayal that results in Lin's expulsion, they swap places. Lin becomes convinced to pursue her degree at a community college near Liz's Ohio hometown, while Liz searches for answers as to what drove her parents to leave China before she was born. But when a global catastrophe deepens the fissures between modern-day China and an increasingly fractured United States, Lin and Liz--far from home and estranged from themselves--are forced to confront both the familiar and the strange in each other.

Unspooling over the course of a single extraordinary year in our not-yet-distant past and in small towns from Dandong to Deadwood, Transplants is a piercing story of migration, belonging, and the parts of ourselves that get lost in translation. Alternating between Liz and Lin's perspectives, it is a lyrical and moving exploration of race, love, power, and freedom that illuminates the limits and possibilities of what can happen when we open ourselves to the unknown and reveals how even our fiercest differences may bring us closer than we might ever imagine.

Review Quotes

"Transplants is a gorgeously written, complex, and profoundly moving meditation on place, language, and belonging. What an accomplished debut by Daniel Tam-Claiborne, whose brilliant voice we will certainly hear a great deal of in the future."--Lauren Groff, NYT bestselling author of The Vaster Wilds and Fates and Furies

"Transplants rings with authenticity. Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, it captures the complexities of transnational life with wonderful fidelity. A remarkable debut." --Gish Jen, author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon and The Resisters

"A delicately braided story of two women and their searches for belonging within and across cultures, borders, and languages. Transplants is that rare debut: intricate, ambitious, and beautifully realized." --Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos and Return to Valetto

"Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a remarkable talent telling stories that need to be told. Transplants is honest, gripping, and filled with beauty. It will transport you."--Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek

"Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a world-class advocate for Asian diasporic communities, connecting education with storytelling for social justice around the globe. Now his debut novel Transplants confronts the bloody fight for selfhood amidst transnational, linguistic, and racial borders. Tam-Claiborne brings us a pure gift--revealing humanity as a braid of destruction and restoration."--E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators and The Magical Language of Others

About the Author

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received support from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Kundiman, Sewanee Writers' Conference, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle.