Cinema Love

A Novel

By: Jiaming Tang

Narrated by: Samantha Tan

Winner of the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction
Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick

“Part ghost story, part love story, and part tale of hardscrabble immigrant life.” —The New Yorker

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. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.

Spanning three timelines—post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York—Cinema Love is an “exceptional" and "moving” (Alice Hoffman) epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.©2024 Jiaming Tang (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Most Anticipated by Read Between the Spines, Book Riot, LGBTQ Reads, Debutiful, SheKnows, and Write or Die

A Library Journal Editors' Pick

Just a beautiful novel. Well written, touching, heartbreaking and funny. A must-read.

A tender, heartbreaking, funny and beautifully authentic look at the lives of Chinese immigrants in America. We follow are group of people over three timelines; post-socialist China, 1980's Chinatown and modern New York. Highly recommended reading!

Inventive story elegant prose

Very compelling and original narrative but lovingly rendered. Was riveting from start to finish loved it! What an impressive debut.

An Interesting Idea

Sad to say, this book was way too long. The characters were overly described. While the story of immigrants adjusting to a new life all over-laid with issues of prejudice against gay men sounds like an interesting idea, this one drags on for over 20 years and every chapter feels like another year. No variation in tone: no humor, no fear, no anticipation etc. I just didn’t feel it.