asianamlitfans | A Review of Daniel Tam-Claiborne’s Transplants (Regalo Press, 2025).

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

I am waiting for the Asian American literary criticism book that will focus on all of the brilliant work being put out right now by writers that partially or wholly concerns the COVID pandemic. The last one I read that I really loved was Wang’s Joan is Okay, and Daniel Tam-Claiborne’s Transplants (Regalo Press, 2025) is an outstanding addition to this growing body of literature. Also don’t forget to check out the cool Simon & Schuster imprint link below about Regalo Press. Tam-Claiborne is also author of a previous short story collection, What Never Leaves (Wilder Voice Books, 2012). In any case, let’s get to that marketing description: “A harrowing and poignant novel following two young women in pursuit of kinship and self-discovery who yearn to survive in a world that doesn’t know where either of them belong. On a university campus in rural Qixian, Lin and Liz make an improbable pair: Lin, a Chinese student closer to her menagerie of pets than to her peers, and Liz, a Chinese American teacher grieving her mother’s sudden death. They’re each met with hostility—Lin by her classmates, who mock her for dating a white foreigner; Liz by her fellow English teachers, who exploit their privilege—and forge an unlikely friendship. After a startling betrayal that results in Lin’s expulsion, they swap places. Lin becomes convinced to pursue her degree at a community college near Liz’s Ohio hometown, while Liz searches for answers as to what drove her parents to leave China before she was born. But when a global catastrophe deepens the fissures between modern-day China and an increasingly fractured United States, Lin and Liz—far from home and estranged from themselves—are forced to confront both the familiar and the strange in each other.”

So, my COVID reveal up front is a spoiler, but well, there’s no getting around it, as the description does state that there is a “global catastrophe.” What I loved most about this novel is that it is mathematically structured. On the one hand, the text unfolds over the course of a single year — the novel is partitioned off in seasons. On the other hand, the novel is told in alternating third person perspectives. We start with Lin then go to Liz and then toggle back and forth until the conclusion. This juxtaposition perfectly executes the title’s concern about “transplants,” as each character goes in the opposing direction. There is Lin, the Chinese international student who goes to the United States, while Liz is the American-born English teacher in rural Qixian. Things obviously get really harrowing once COVID lockdown occurs. Liz gets stuck in Shanghai, contracts COVID, also recovers, while becoming very concerned with the incredible levels of surveillance, and then, with the help Stephen, one of two friends that she meets in Shanghai, she attempts to reconnect with her roots. When Lin’s college in the United States gets shut down, and she gets booted out of her temporary living situation (by Liz’s brother Phil no less… by the way, I absolutely detested this character and wanted some extra character development just because I found him so excruciating LOL and was hoping there might be some sort of minor redemption for him), she relies upon her fellow Chinese international student friends to survive. Eventually, she and another student (Gua) decide to leave the area (by this point, Lin drops out of her college program and needs to find something else to do), attempting to go to places with less density but all the while aware that they might be targeted for being Chinese. Lin eventually makes it all the way to the west coast, where her fellow student departs for China, but Lin remains unsettled (and unfulfilled) and stays. The concluding arc pushes Liz to confront unanswered questions about her genealogical background and her familial past, while Lin makes an incredibly interesting choice to join a nursing program in Seattle and give some of her time to an Asian American-dominated eldercare location. Lin’s growing connection to a Japanese American woman named Ruth is a highlight. This latter section was the most interesting to me just from the framework of what Tam-Claiborne is doing to show how a Chinese transnational comes to racial consciousness and considers the disposing of ethnic affiliations for a pan ethnic racial designation. What I think the novel does best is to show the situational privilege of someone like Liz. Indeed, even despite her time in Shanghai, I never once doubted that she could find her way back to the United States if she wanted to. Though Liz faces her own trials and tribulations while in China, she does very little to connect with Lin once Lin is settled in the United States. Thus, in some ways, it is Lin who carries the emotional weight and core of this novel, and we are incredibly lucky that she is such an interesting character, one who models the kind of adaptation that is perhaps essential for a migrant’s survival. The final pages are masterfully understated, and Tam-Claiborne doesn’t overplay closure or reconnection in order to force some sort of unearned or treacly rapprochement (even if I wanted to see it LOL). Liz and Lin have gone through a lot, and we can only hope that their journey of growth may somehow still be interwoven with the other, as each moves forward. It is in this sense that I think Tam-Claiborne’s novel is truly refreshing. Romance plots and even genealogical ones seem to scaffold what is, at its center, a narrative about a friendship between the titular transplants, a platonic link that we hope endures across time and space and one big ocean. An absolutely sparkling debut novel. We’ll of course see much more from this talented writer

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