The Other Side of Home

<p>A form asks <em>What race should we put here?</em><br>Thirteen-year-old Kai Lin hesitates. His silence echoes across two continents and two generations.</p><p><em>The Other Side of Home</em> is a multi-layered cross-cultural novel that traces the story of a Chinese-American boy and a Black American girl who fall in love in a fractured corner of Washington D.C.-and what happens when that love is asked to survive legacy distance betrayal and the weight of two unforgiving cultures.</p><p>Zhihao Lin is the son of Chinese immigrants raised behind the counter of his father's carryout in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Quiet mathematically gifted and emotionally reserved Zhihao keeps his head down and follows his family's expectations-until he meets Aminah Johnson a bold brilliant science student with a voice that won't shrink. Their friendship begins when they're both ten. By high school it deepens into love kept secret from both families who are bound to disapprove.</p><p>As the two navigate adolescence church hats and chopsticks community suspicion and parental warnings they fight for a relationship that no one wants to recognize. When their secret becomes public at graduation both families erupt. Still Zhihao and Aminah commit to one another-through college engagement and eventually marriage. They have two children Kai and Zola and for a while they believe love is enough.</p><p>Then comes the offer: Zhihao's family opens a tech company in Hong Kong and urges him to take over. Against Aminah's hesitation they move overseas. But China does not welcome her. Aminah faces constant racism cultural isolation and microaggressions too sharp to ignore. Their children are bullied. Zhihao increasingly distant immerses himself in work-and into the orbit of Mei Lin a poised Chinese investor with personal ambitions and no patience for Aminah's presence.</p><p>When Aminah is framed for a drug crime by Mei and arrested in Hong Kong Zhihao fails to protect her. She is deported. The children are taken back to the U.S. by Zhihao's parents. Alone humiliated and heartbroken Aminah rebuilds her life in Washington D.C.-this time not as someone's wife but as an advocate mother and truth-teller. Her essays on race womanhood and diaspora go viral. Her strength is no longer private.</p><p>Meanwhile Zhihao begins to unravel. He loses Mei loses his company's standing and realizes too late what his silence has cost. His first attempt to reconnect is met with cold distance from his children-especially from Kai who says: <em>You let them hurt her.</em></p><p>The novel's final act belongs to the children. Kai and Zola biracial and bicultural begin to shape their identities not by what they were given-but by what they refuse to lose. Through their own struggles public school forms and family heritage projects they come to understand that the question <em>What are you?</em> cannot be answered with a checkbox. Only with a choice.</p><p>Told in lyrical prose and alternating perspectives-Aminah Zhihao Zola Kai and Aminah's mother-the novel spans more than a decade and two continents. It is structured in four acts with interludes and culminates in a scene where Kai and Zola circle both Black and Asian on their school form-and write in a third box: <em>Human.</em></p>