Words & Pictures with Kelly Yang, Presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures

Mia Tang is going for her dreams! After years of hard work, Mia Tang finally gets to go on vacation with her family — to China! A total dream come true! Mia can’t wait to see all her cousins and grandparents again, especially her cousin Shen. As she roams around Beijing, witnessing some of the big changes China’s going through, Mia thinks about the turbulent changes in her own life. Mia is more determined than ever, now that she finally has . . . room to dream!

Kelly Yang is the author of Front Desk, which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was chosen a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Public Library, and may others. Kelly’s family immigrated to the United States from China when she was a young girl, and she grew up in California, in circumstances very similar to those of Mia Tang. Kelly went to college at the age of 13, and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. She is the founder of The Kelly Yang Project, a writing and debating program for children in Asia and the United States. Her writing has appeared in the South China Morning Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic.