This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Daniel Tam-Claiborne about his debut novel, Transplants (Regalo Press). Transplants asks its readers, and these are Daniel’s words, “Who gets to belong, who gets left behind, and how can fleeting encounters alter someone’s trajectory forever?”
This conversation has been edited for time.
About the book:
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.
About Daniel:
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.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Serica Initiative, which “raises awareness of the Asian diaspora in America through dialogue, storytelling, and the power of convening”
PBS: Daniel co-produced the digital documentary series be/longing: Asian Americans Now, Between Black and White: Asian Americans Speak Out, Voices Rising: What’s Next for Asian Americans in the Arts?, and Climate Artists
What Never Leaves by Daniel Tam-Claiborne (Wilder Voice Books)
Daniel Tam-Claiborne recommends:
River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (William Morrow)
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World, Penguin Random House)
No-No Boy by Okada (University of Washington Press)
Little Gods by Meng Jin (Mariner Books)
The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara (W. W. Norton & Company)
The Leavers by Lisa Ko (Algonquin Books)
The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang (Crown Publishing)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne (Regalo Press)
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World, Penguin Random House)
The Leavers by Lisa Ko (Algonquin Books)
Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej (Bloomsbury Publishing)
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee (Mariner Books)
The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh (Tin House Books)
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Bookworks of Whitefish, offering new books of all genres, stationery, and puzzles. Open 11AM to 6PM Monday through Saturday. Located in downtown Whitefish, Montana, in the Third & Spokane Building.
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The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.