REGISTER HERE
We welcome all readers to join us as we discuss the new release Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen. The two discussion dates will be followed by a virtual author meet & greet on September 27. Free copies of the book are available at WLPL while supplies last!
“Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.
Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.
With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.” – From the publisher
The sessions are hosted by Purdue University Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center with partnership from Brian Lamb School of Communication and West Lafayette Public Library. Please contact aaarcc@purdue.edu with questions.
Te-Ping Chen is a writer and journalist currently living in Philadelphia. She currently writes for The Wall Street Journal. You can read more about her at te-pingchen.com.