The Family Chao

The Family Chao is an adult literary novel written by Chinese American author Lan Samantha Chang and published by W. W. Norton in 2022. In tracing the tensions between the parents and three grown sons of a Chinese American family running a Chinese restaurant in the small town of Haven, Wisconsin, the novel provides an incisive commentary on family life, desire and ambition, and the prejudices that run through a rural community. While the first half of the novel unearths the many tensions among the Chao family and their circle, the second half shifts into a courtroom drama as a trial unfolds accusing Dagou, the eldest Chao son, of the murder of his father, Leo. His brothers, Ming and James, struggle with their own griefs, resentments, and thwarted hopes. The novel borrows its plot from the 1880 Russian literary classic The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but Chang adds her own incisive commentary on the experience of Americans of Chinese descent.

Chang, who is the administrator of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has won several awards for her writing, including coveted fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment of the Arts. The Family Chao won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction and was selected as a Best Book of the Year by National Public Radio and Vogue magazine, among other honors.

This guide references the hardcover first edition.

Content Warning: This guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of racism and discrimination.

Plot Summary

In the Prologue, an omniscient narrator reflects that for 35 years Leo and Winnie Chang ran a Chinese restaurant in the town of Haven, Wisconsin. Though the community ignored evident troubles within the family, everyone was shocked by the events of the past year.

Just before Christmas, James Chao, the youngest Chao brother, returns from his first semester of college in California. At the train station, a Chinese man approaches him and tries to communicate with him in Mandarin, which James does not speak. When the man falls down the stairs, James, a pre-med student, performs CPR. After the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) take the man away, James collects the man’s carpetbag, resolving to locate his family.

In Wisconsin, Ming, the middle Chao brother who lives a successful and wealthy life in New York City, warns James of the conflict between their elder brother, Dagou, and their father, Leo. Dagou has broken up with his fiancée Katherine because he has fallen in love with Brenda, a white woman his father hired to work at the family’s restaurant, Fine Chao. Katherine, a successful lawyer in Chicago, is a long-time friend of the Chaos. Dagou wants his brothers to take his side in the dispute, but James feels torn between love for his brothers and his parents, despite his father’s insulting and crude behavior. Leo thinks Dagou is lazy, worthless, and lacking ambition. In a conversation at the restaurant, James warns his father that the freezer room of the Fine Chao is not up to code and that someone could be locked inside.

Dagou arranges a luncheon for their family and friends at the Spiritual House, a Buddhist community where their mother, Winnie, has recently decided to live. During lunch, Dagou suggests that he should be made a partner in the family restaurant. Six years earlier, when Winnie fell ill, Dagou complied with his father’s request to come home and help with the restaurant. Now, Dagou feels he should be made a partner. Leo rejects his demand, insults the nuns and his family, and throws meat to the monastery dogs, which causes the Chao family dog, Alf, to run away. Winnie and James are upset by the argument, while Ming, who’s tried to separate himself from his Chinese heritage, withdraws.

James speaks with Dagou, then visits Brenda’s house to collect Alf, who runs away again. Brenda mocks Katherine, who doesn’t believe Dagou will really leave her. Katherine loaned Dagou money but refused to return his engagement ring—a jade panther with diamond spots and a gold setting—a Chao family heirloom. Late that night, both James and Ming hear Dagou broadcasting over a pirate radio station, telling a story about a time he was a boy and Leo embarrassed him at the post office. Dagou admits that he has imagined his father dying.

A storm brings several inches of snow the night before the Chaos’ Christmas party. At the Fine Chao, James witnesses a customer insulting O-Lan, a Chinese immigrant who works in the kitchen. Katherine and Ming quarrel when Ming tells Katherine to let go of Dagou. Ming and James have lunch at the diner run by the Skaer family, whose children bullied both Ming and James in school. Ming expresses his disdain for their family and his wish to escape by having money. James invites Alice Wa, the young woman he desires, to his house. Alice tells James that Dagou has run up a large bill at her mother’s grocery store.

Late that night, James learns that Winnie is in the hospital. Dagou brings Winnie a bag of her things. At the hospital, Leo and Dagou fight, and everyone hears Dagou says he wants to kill his father. After driving away in a temper, Dagou is humiliated at a convenience store when he doesn’t have enough money to pay for liquor and lottery tickets.

Dagou plans a magnificent Christmas dinner to impress everyone, especially Brenda. He spends the last of his money on groceries and liquor. Brenda brings her old boyfriend as a guest. Dagou prepares a menu that astonishes the diners, but when Fang Wa jokes that the stew meat that the Skaer family gave them was the missing family dog, Brenda’s guest gets sick and leaves.

Leo announces that he intends to sell the restaurant to someone from Chicago, and Dagou will get nothing. Leo speculates to O-Lan that the Chinese man’s life savings were in the carpetbag James brought home. Dagou, who is furious with his father, imagines locking him in the freezer room. Instead, he goes to Brenda’s and they open Christmas gifts left by their guests. Early Christmas morning, James thinks he hears thumping downstairs in the restaurant, but Alice tells him to go back to sleep.

The second part of the novel opens three months later in the timeline. James sits in the Skaer diner reading a magazine article that describes the upcoming trial of William (Dagou) Chao for the murder of his father, Leo Chao, who was locked in the freezer room of his restaurant on Christmas Eve. The magazine article is rife with stereotypes and anti-Asian bias, and several commenters express outrage over the belief that the diners ate Alf, the family dog.

James attends a memorial service at the Spiritual House for Winnie, who died of a second stroke. As he collects his mother’s things, James wonders where the old man’s carpetbag disappeared to. Police searched for it when they arrested Dagou, as the Chinese man’s family has been trying to locate the bag. Ming, who tried to fly back to New York City on Christmas Eve, was grounded by snow and made the long drive back to Wisconsin. Ming posted bail for Dagou and is helping James run the restaurant. Katherine is helping their family friend, the lawyer Jerry Stern, prepare for Dagou’s trial.

Ming makes Katherine dinner at the house, and she is distressed when she misplaces the jade ring that Dagou gave her as an engagement ring. Ming grows increasingly anxious and suspects that O-Lan has some role in the family troubles. One night he follows her to her apartment, where he realizes that she is his half-sister. O-Lan says Leo abandoned her mother, stealing her money and a jade ring, and her mother died in poverty. When O-Lan located Leo in the US, Winnie and the abbess of the Spiritual House persuaded Leo to give O-Lan a job.

The trial begins, reported on through the blog of a college student and family friend, Lynn Chin. Lynn reports how the prosecution sets up the case as an Asian issue about a hard-working immigrant father murdered by his lazy and ungrateful son. O-Lan testifies through a translator. Alice, James, Katherine, and Brenda testify as well. James and Alice’s affair is exposed, and they feel guilty for not paying attention to the thumps they heard that night, which they now realize was Leo stuck in the freezer.

Ming visits O-Lan again. He learns she can speak English and realizes she has the old man’s carpetbag. Ming accuses O-Lan of killing Leo. She mocks Ming and says he is the one guilty of Leo’s death since he knew what Dagou planned but left anyway. That night, exhausted and hallucinating, Ming imagines he hears Leo talking to him through the radio, claiming Ming is his heir. The next morning, Dagou testifies on his own behalf. He becomes emotional and weeps that he wasn’t the son Leo wanted, admitting that he imagined his father’s death several times. Ming bursts into the courtroom, claiming that he, Ming, is guilty of killing Leo. Katherine responds by producing the key to the freezer room door and claiming she found it in Dagou’s jacket.

Ming, who is ill, is taken to the hospital. He asks James to keep O-Lan from leaving town. James goes to O-Lan’s apartment and sees that she has the jade ring. He doesn’t stop her from leaving. The jury returns a verdict finding Dagou guilty of murder.

On Christmas Eve, a year later, James visits Dagou in prison. James and Ming now live in Haven and are running the restaurant while waiting to appeal Dagou’s case. Alf the dog turns out to have been adopted by the Skaer family. All three brothers continue to wrestle with feeling responsible for their father’s death, and none of the major characters knows what the future holds for them. The book ends with O-Lan in a different city, thinking of the brothers she left behind.