Wangs Vs. the World (Chang)

The Wangs Vs. the World 
Jade Chang, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544734098


Summary
Meet the Wangs, the unforgettable immigrant family whose spectacular fall from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings them together in a way money never could.

Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, bighearted immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he s just been ruined by the financial crisis.

Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family s ancestral lands and his pride.

Charles pulls Andrew, his aspiring-comedian son, and Grace, his style-obsessed daughter, out of schools he can no longer afford. Together with their stepmother, Barbra, they embark on a cross-country road trip from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the upstate New York hideout of the eldest daughter, disgraced art-world it-girl Saina.

But with his son waylaid by a temptress in New Orleans, his wife ready to defect for a set of 1,000-thread-count sheets, and an epic smashup in North Carolina, Charles may have to choose between the Old World and the New, between keeping his family intact and finally fulfilling his dream of starting anew in China. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70
• Where—State of Ohio, USA
• Raised—San Fernando Valley, California
• Education—B.A., Cornell Univesity
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Jade Chang is an American editor, journalist, and author. Her debut novel, The Wangs Vs. the World, was published to wide acclaim in 2016.

Chang's parents met when the two came to the U.S. from Taiwan for graduate school. Chang herself was born in Ohio, although when she was nine, her family moved to California, a place she now considers home. She went cross-country for college, however, to Cornell University in upstate New York where she received her B.A. in English.

Over the years, Chang has written for a number of magazines but most consistently for Metropolis, a high-end New York-based architecture and design magazine. She became the west coast editor. It was from this vantage point, observing lives of the wealthy, that Chang witnessed the 2008 recession and its effect on people of means—an event that inspired The Wangs Vs. the World.

Most recently, Chang became an editor for GoodReads. Earlier in her career, she had worked with Elizabeth Khuri Chandler—before Chandler and her husband Otis started GoodReads. A number of years later, when GoodReads expanded, Chang was hired to edit the website's Young Adult newsletter.

Chang is the recipient of a Sundance Fellowship for Arts Journalism, the AIGA/Winterhouse Award for Design Criticism, and the James D. Houston Memorial scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Jade Chang delivers a rollicking, off-beat, on-target illustration of culture clash and the American dream turned on its head. With a tight cast of characters, Chang offers a sympathetic look at the plight of one family struggling through the 2008 recession. We watch its members fumble, often hilariously, through a rocky adjustment to their new status—from the haves to the have-nots. READ MORE.
Cara Kless - LitLovers


A riches-to-rags story, an immigrant story and a quixotic road trip are bundled into Jade Chang's sharply funny first novel…This novel is overstuffed with subplots and detours, but Charles…makes the ride worthwhile, as does the author's savage takedown of the American dream.
Carmela Ciuraru - New York Times


Jade Chang is unendingly clever in her generous debut novel about the comedy of racial identity. If there is a stereotype that Asian-Americans kids are quiet, unpopular and studious, that their parents are strict disciplinarians (think Tiger Mom), then Chang has conjured up the Wangs to prove otherwise…. As much as The Wangs vs. the World is about Asian-American identity, it is also a sprawling family adventure compressed into a road trip novel. The result is a manic, consistently funny book of alternating perspectives as the Wangs make various cross-country stopovers in their '80s station wagon…. To be a first- or second-generation immigrant means wrestling with the reality that no place is ever truly home. In Chang's compassionate and bright-eyed novel, she proves that struggling with that identity can at least be funny and strange, especially when you struggle together with family.
Kevin Nguyen - New York Times Book Review


With mischievous, Dickensian glee, Chang’s prose power-drives the appealingly dysfunctional family, now a disgrace to the wet dream of capitalism, through their postfall paces.... Chang’s confident, broad-stroke, and go-for-broke style makes her fresh twist on the American immigrant saga of the woebegone Wangs one of 2016’s must-reads.... You will laugh your ass off while learning a thing or two about buying into, and then having to bail on, the American dream. But mostly, you’ll get to savor, thanks to a wildly innovative plot twist, the I Chang of this diabolical dramedy: how it’s love, not money, that really makes the world, and all the people in it, go round.
Lisa Shea - Elle


One of the best debut novels of 2016, this warmhearted, wide-ranging novel tells the wholly modern story of the Wang family: Father Charles has had his fortune decimated by the financial crisis, so he wants to corral his family, return to China, and start all over. But first, everyone—Charles, his wife, and their three children—has to sort out the tangles of their lives.
Estelle Tang - Elle


It all comes crashing down for Charles Wang, so he and his family hit the road. This endearing debut is more fun than you’d expect from a trip with this backdrop.
Marie Claire


[Chang's] book is unrelentingly fun, but it's also raw and profane—a story of fierce pride, fierce anger, and even fiercer love.... The Wangs vs. the World drives home the fact that there is no one immigrant experience—just humanity in all its glorious, sloppy complexity, doing its best to survive and thrive despite the whims of society and circumstance. With plenty of laughs, both bitter and sweet, along the way.
NPR.org


(Starred review.) [S]parkling...a family whose fortune has been lost in the 2008 financial crisis takes a cross-country road trip in an effort to regroup.... Various small crises...keep the plot percolating. Chang’s charming and quirky characters and comic observations make the novel a jaunty joy ride to remember.
Publishers Weekly


When Charles Wang's cosmetics empire comes crashing down...[he] leaves California on a road trip to upstate New York with his second wife and otherwise engaged younger children.... Incidents along the way make Charles understand that he must choose between past and family.
Library Journal


[R]eaders with a taste for outsize family dysfunction, a la Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest (2016) and Emma Straub’s The Vacationers (2014), will whip through this one with smiles on their faces.
Booklist


A Chinese-American family tumbles from riches to rags in Chang’s jam-packed, high-energy debut.... [T]his debut novelist holds nothing back. Head-spinning fun with many fine moments—but the emotional aspects of the book are weakened by the barrage effect.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Wangs Vs. the World...then take off on your own:

1. Why is Charles Wang "mad at America" and "mad at history"? Does he have a right to be? To what extent is he the cause of his own misfortune? Or to what extent is he simply one of the millions of victims of the 2008 financial collapse?

2. How does this story differ from other immigrant stories you may have read? How does it differ in tone? Are Chang's characters as sympathetic as those in other coming-to-America novels? What about the characters' sense of displacement, their feeling of never being at home anywhere?

3. Describe the members of the Wang family: Charles, the patriarch; Barbra, Charles's wife; and the three children, Andrew, Grace, and Saina (pronounced Sy-na). What are their particular hopes and internal conflicts? What conflicts exist between the family members?

4. Follow-up to Question 3: Talk about the ways in which the Wang family meets the definition of "dysfunctional." Any similarities to issues within your own family?

5. The author has said that the Wangs struggle with and are influenced by "their experiences and knowledge as Chinese people...but they do not struggle over their Chineseness." What might she mean by that observation?

6. What does Chang have to say about the worlds of makeup and fashion, as well as the visual arts and stand-up comedy? What are the differing "currencies," other than money, that determine success or failure in these areas? What is valued...or how are individuals valued in these industries/markets? Do fashion, art, and comedy-performance have anything in common with one another?

7. How does the novel portray the power of the internet? What impact, for example, does the web have on Saina? The novel takes place back in 2008; is the Net different today?
 
8. How does Charles Wang view the American Dream? Does he consider it strictly an American invention, or does he see it as a universal longing, a dream shared by people everywhere? How do you see the American Dream?

9. In an interview with Rumpus.com, Chang was asked where she places the Wang family on the reality-to-absurdity spectrum, Chang said...

I think that real life is absurd. There are plenty of things that happen in our day-to-day lives that would be unbelievable if we saw them in a movie or read about them in a book. So, to me, the story of the Wangs is in some ways larger than life—but I don’t find any of it to be untrue. My goal was definitely emotional truth.

Do you see life as absurd? Do you see the Wang story as absurd? If so, what is the emotional truth Chang refers to? Actually, maybe one might start with a definition of "absurdity."

10. What do the characters—all of them, but in particular Charles—come to learn by the novel's end? What lessons do they learn or insights do they gain, about themselves, the world around them, and how they fit into this world?

11. Much has been made by reviewers about the book's humor. Point to some of the passages/events you find particularly funny.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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