Cinema Love: A Novel

Shortlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick

“Exceptional, moving, and not to be missed.”—Alice Hoffman

“Gentle and fierce, heartbreaking without sacrificing its sense of humor . . . I have never read anything like it.”—Robert Jones, Jr.

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.