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Jiaming Tang, Cinema Love, John Murray, 2024. 304 pgs.

Cinema Love is the impressive debut novel by Chinese-American writer Jiaming Tang. The book’s blurb and the opening chapters may lead readers to believe that it primarily explores the lives of gay men in post-Mao China, a period when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. That portrayal includes the imagination of a nondescript cinema functioning as a queer utopia and a Stonewall-type riot in which gay men courageously resist the police—both of which lack historical accuracy. However, as the narrative transitions to 1980s Chinatown and contemporary, post-pandemic New York, the novel’s true strength emerges: a poignant story of migrant lives, women’s agency, and the reconciliation of traumatic pasts.

The tentative, fearful gay characters eventually give way to resilient female characters who dare to love and hate with intensity. The book becomes most relatable and evocative when read as a chronicle of the migratory experiences of an older generation of (often undocumented) migrants from China to the United States. These individuals carry buried but unforgotten traumas, endure shattered ‘American dreams’, and yet persist in valiantly holding on to their aspirations, hopes, and desires. The novel stands as a love song to Chinatown and the Chinese diaspora community that the author knows intimately.

The introduction of ghostly elements might initially seem disorienting in a narrative grounded primarily in social realism. Nevertheless, readers are encouraged to embrace the supernatural—ghosts, destiny, and other ethereal forces—to make sense of the novel’s many twists, turns, and coincidences. Accepting these elements opens the door to intriguing insights into the mundane, everyday dimensions of religion and spirituality in Asia, as experienced by some.

The title, Cinema Love, primarily references gay men’s affection for one another within the Workers’ Cinema, where mainstream war films created an ideal backdrop for clandestine cruising in the shadows. Tang’s writing is strikingly cinematic, deftly cutting between scenes, characters, and perspectives—from intimate close-ups of individual lives to expansive long shots capturing the social panorama and communal mobilisation. At times, the story risks lapsing into melodrama, sentimentality, or even kitsch. However, written in an era when diasporic Chinese communities in the United States and worldwide are grappling with the historical and contemporary traumas of homophobia, xenophobia, migration controls, and anti-Asian racism, this gut-punching melodrama serves as a potent and necessary salve for its characters and readers alike.

The sophistication of the novel’s narrative structure and character development belies the fact that this is Tang’s debut work. Cinema Love is a substantial contribution to Asian-American literature and provides a strong foundation for an inevitable feature film adaptation.

How to cite: Bao, Hongwei. “Gut-punching Melodrama: Jiaming Tang’s Cinema Love.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 9 Jan. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/01/09/cinema-love.

Hongwei Bao is a queer Chinese writer, translator and academic based in Nottingham, UK. He is the author of Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020) and Queering the Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2025) and co-editor of Queer Literature in the Sinosphere (Bloomsbury, 2024). His poetry books include The Passion of the Rabbit God (Valley Press, 2024) and Dream of the Orchid Pavilion (Big White Shed, 2024). [All contributions by Hongwei Bao.]