David Shih

media release: After his father’s passing in 2019, David Shih sought to unravel the underlying tensions that defined the complex relationship between him and his parents—a question that ultimately forced a reckoning with the expectations he encountered as the only son of Chinese immigrants and the realities of what it means to be Asian in a segregated country. Chinese Prodigal is a candid examination of a society and the people it has never made space for.

In public life and in Shih’s own, “Asian Americanness” has changed shape constantly, directed by the needs of the country’s racial imaginary. A sliding scale, visibility for Asians in America has always been relative, something that only comes into focus when it aligns with broader political agendas. Structured as a memoir in essays, Chinese Prodigal examines the emergence of “Asian American” in a post–Civil Rights America, from the moment the concept took political hold with the construction of the model minority myth, then galvanizing in the wake of the death of Vincent Chin in 1980s Detroit, and on through the vexed place of Asians and Asian Americans in the right-wing effort to dismantle affirmative action and remake public education. Present in the food we eat, the jobs we take, and the ways we parent, the process of becoming an American is defined by who and what you must sacrifice to survive and excel.

A work of rare subtlety, Chinese Prodigal offers a new vocabulary for understanding a racial hierarchy too often conceptualized as binary. It is a moving testimony of a son, father, and citizen stepping outside the expectations imposed on him.

David Shih is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he has taught since 1999. He holds degrees from the University of Texas, the University of Oregon, and the University of Michigan.

He has published in national outlets such as the New York Times, The New Republic, The Progressive, Slate, NPR’s Code Switch, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Inside Higher Ed, and he has presented his ideas at local, state, and national levels, including NPR’s All Things Considered, WPR’s The Joy Cardin Show and The Larry Meiller Show, and WNYC’s All In with Alison Stewart.

His book Chinese Prodigal: A Memoir in Eight Arguments (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2023) is now available. It is the winner of the Bernard J. Brommel Award for Biography/Memoir from the Society of Midland Authors and the Norbert Blei/August Derleth Nonfiction Book Award of the Wisconsin Writers Awards from the Arts + Literature Laboratory.

He grew up in north Texas and lives in Wisconsin with his wife, Robin, and son, Jacob.

Since 2011 Shake Rag Alley has provided residencies to award-winning Wisconsin writers, offering time and space to create. In 2025, we’re partnering with Wisconsin People & Ideas, the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission through the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Arts + Literature Laboratory, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets to offer the Winter Writers Reading Series. In 2025, we’ll be adding the Swanson Emerging Poet Fellowship with the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (stay tuned!).

Writers stay in Shake Rag Alley’s historic lodging facilities surrounded by the creative community of Mineral Point. Visiting writers participate in community outreach activities, including readings, workshops, and school visits as part of the Winter Writers Reading Series. 

We are excited to partner with Mineral Point’s independent bookstore for our 2025 reading series. Unless noted, readings will be held at Republic of Letters Books, 151 High St., Mineral Point.