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Start giftingBeijing Bastard
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreRaised in a strict Chinese-American household, Val Wang dutifully got good grades, took piano lessons, and performed in a Chinese dance troupe—until she shaved her head and became a leftist. But Val's true mutiny was when she moved to China, the land her parents had fled.
In 1998, Val arrives in Beijing expecting to find freedom . . . but she finds her traditional relatives instead. She discovers a city rebelling against its roots, struggling to find a new, modern identity like her. A thriving avant-garde subculture makes art out of the chaos in Beijing's gritty outskirts.
Brilliantly observed and winningly told, Beijing Bastard is a compelling story of a young woman finding her place in the world and of China, as its ancient past gives way to a dazzling but uncertain future.
Val Wang is an author and multimedia storyteller. Her multimedia projects work at the edge of digital innovation in journalism. She most recently created and produced Planet Takeout, an interactive, multi-platform documentary on the role of Chinese takeouts as a vital cultural crossroads in America. The project incubated at WGBH Radio as part of the nationwide Localore initiative. Before that, she produced OpenCourt, a Knight News Challenge-funded project from WBUR that used digital technology to open a district court south of Boston. She teaches in the English and Media Studies Department of Bentley University. Val lives in Boston, but her heart is still partly in Beijing.
Emily Woo Zeller began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. She returned to the United States in 2009 and found a natural fit as an audiobook narrator. Described by AudioFile magazine as doing "an extraordinary job of varying the voices in the dialogue without losing the intimacy of the story," Emily's multilingual, multicultural framework brings a particularly unique, clear-eyed, and intimate perspective into Asian American narratives. While she specializes in Asian American narratives, Emily's work spans a broad spectrum, including young adult fiction and such titles as The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore and The Sex Diaries Project by Arianne Cohen. She also narrated Gulp by Mary Roach, for which she won an AudioFile Earphones Award.