All of us here at Kaya are ecstatic to announce the official publication of our reprinting of H.T. Tsiang’s 1937 novel And China Has Hands!

We’ve been so excited about this book. On 10/19, we celebrated the life and work of H.T. Tsiang at our USC event, Radical Failure as Revolutionary Agitprop. There, we heard from Floyd Cheung, the scholar and writer who bought Tsiang’s works to Kaya Press, and the editor of Kaya’s series reprinting Tsiang’s books, and from Hua Hsu, whose recently published A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press), explores Tsiang’s life in detail.

We re-animated the life and legacy of H.T. Tsiang at our 10/20 event,Revolutionary Oddball: A Celebration of Writer H.T. Tsiang—our first event at Kaya’s new shared space in Boyle Heights (just down the street from Evergreen Cemetery, where Tsiang is buried). Floyd Cheung, Ed Lin, Sesshu Foster, Jen Hofer, Kima Jones, and Iris De Anda read excerpts from And China Has Hands, along with their own work, to christen the space and pay homage to H.T. Tsiang and his work.

If you missed those events, make sure you check out our recap!

And China Has Hands, which Patricia P. Chu describes as “vivid and succinct,” shows us the world of 1930s New York through the eyes of Wan-Lee Wong, a newly arrived, nearly penniless, Chinese immigrant everyman who falls in love with Pearl Chang, a biracial Chinese and African American woman who wanders into his life.

Author Alan M. Wald says that the novel “brings fresh oxygen to the subject of the multi-ethnic dimensions of 1930s radical literature. Something magical ensues from the beguiling aura of this cross-genre writer who moves among a myriad of styles with magnificent fluidity.” Shawn Wong calls it “a love story between a man and a woman and a man and a country that is full of pain, and hope, and failure, and dreams, and loss, and pride, and patriotism.”

We can’t wait for you to read And China Has Hands and get to know H.T. Tsiang, oddball and radical. Order your copy now!