A Project of Defiance: The Millions Interviews C Pam Zhang

C Pam Zhang’s first novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a thrilling, lyrical take on the harsh and beautiful landscapes of the American West, and its muscular writing shows that even these seemingly ironclad narratives—the white, American cowboy—are actually more fragile than they seem, if not entirely breakable.

The story centers on two Chinese American siblings on the lam after their sometimes abusive father dies, leaving the two orphans to do whatever they have to do to survive. The story takes place in a kind of dreamscape that both feels in and out of history. For instance, we all know the story of the forty-niners, but