Born in Beijing, C Pam Zhang is mostly an artifact of the United States. She is the author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which won the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, was nominated for the Booker Prize, and was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com This week's sponsor: Get $100 off your first month with Talkspace. Visit talkspace.com and use promo code Thresholds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices