Staring Into the Sun

Description

Orders now open. This book will be released on May 5, 2026. Orders will ship before or on release date. 

Staring Into the Sun

By Madelyn Postman

ABOUT THE BOOK

England, 2015. Madelyn dreads telling her young children about her mother, who died by suicide decades earlier. But when her child asks about skin tone and eye color, she’s compelled to share the painful truth.

A Cantonese village, 1895. Emigrating to America seems inevitable for teenage Song, whose family is starving during a drought. His grandmother tells him about Chinese emigrants’ ordeals and predicts a fate that will bring tragedy upon his descendants.

Oakland, 1921. Henri is held responsible for a theft at his brother-in-law’s store. By 1955, he owns the store but resents his business rival, whose philandering son has married Henri’s daughter Corri.

San Francisco Bay Area, 1995. Corri relies, perhaps too much, on kindness and spirituality to get her through life. She shares a crucial poem with her granddaughter Madelyn.

Staring into the Sun links memoir and the true stories of a Chinese American family. From the reverberations of the Chinese Exclusion Act to the glamour of a millionaire, a magician, and a model, this collection lays bare one family’s tragedies and triumphs.

Author Madelyn Postman is a Nevada native who spent her formative years in San Francisco and New England. She holds a BA in Visual Arts and Art History from Brown University and has been on her junior year abroad since 1992. She now lives outside London with her husband, two children, Labradoodle, black cat, fish, and a gecko. Her fiction and nonfiction writing has been published on three continents. Learn more about madelynpostman.com.