By: Jiaming Tang Moving from rural post-socialist China to present-day NYC Chinatown, CINEMA LOVE is an immigrant story, a queer love story, and a tender examination of the legacies of caregiving and assimilation in Chinese America. 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 fellow countrymen found intimacy in the privacy of the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men—guarding their secrets, guiding them on their love lives, and even finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his lover is discovered, a series of haunting events unfold that propel these characters toward an uncertain future in America. As we follow these characters from Fuzhou to NYC Chinatown, from first love to old age, we bear witness to the patterns of migration and tensions of assimilation, and how history and memory forever weigh on the present. CINEMA LOVE is a big-hearted and heart-shattering novel about desire, secrets, grief, how we care for one another, and how we survive.
