Harlan Margaret

"Even at her young age, Harlan Margaret Van Cao is a fresh new voice, with an arresting and unnerving way with language, creating a work of breathtaking and at times gut-twisting power."

-Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

The start of a career: Family in Six Tones: A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter

Featured on Good Morning America’s “22 Books to Add to Your Reading List,” this dual first-person, feminine memoir explores a complex intergenerational relationship affected by past tragedy and cultural clashes. Harlan writes collaboratively, yet independently, with her mother, the acclaimed Vietnamese-American novelist Lan Cao.

“Family in Six Tones is a brilliant duet and a moving exploration of the American immigrant experience. Their astonishingly heartfelt dialogue offers a model for sharing the deeper truths that so often get ignored or forgotten.”—Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being

“Startling and necessary, Family in Six Tones takes us deep into the singular bond of a mother and daughter, fiercely connected by a love wrought out of loss and the will to create anew. This memoir will forever trouble the water of the American Dream, complicating it and clarifying it of the myths and masks of survival, assimilation, and success.  —Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt‍ ‍

“Family in Six Tones is a brilliant memoir in ways that are redolent with the joys of true literature, innovative inform, keen in observation and insight, shaped by two narrative voices that are distinct but are both captivating in tone and nuance and manifest humanity. The book speaks to the central theme of life: Who am I? This mother and daughter seek the answer to that question with rich complexity and unflinching honesty and in doing so illuminate the yearning for a self that drives us all.”—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer winner and author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Purchase Memoir

Harlan spent her childhood immersed in academia and travel. She is a recently graduated student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She majored in Psychology with an emphasis on intimacy and psychoanalysis.

At eighteen, she released her first work with Penguin Random House, appearing as a guest on NPR and literature podcasts, one of which was hosted by Chilean author Isabelle Allende, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She went on to work as the executive assistant for Maya Soetoro of the Obama Family in her peace work for the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance through college. She then worked in Psychosocial assessment at the PEMA secretariat in Bhutan, a national Buddhist clinic for holistic mental health, run by Her Majesty, the Queen.

She is inspired by her experiences abroad and the literature of John Updike, Han Kang, Clarice Lispector, Shani Mootoo, and Ottessa Moshfegh. Harlan is drawn to reading and writing stories about innocence, power, rage, morality, and love. She believes in literary fiction as a vehicle for change. She strives to apply her anthropological education to contribute to the book industry and impact modern culture, such as with her two literary fiction novels in the works:

She is currently preparing her debut novel with the esteemed editor Molly Zakoor— a reparatory story of the daughter of a geisha born on the same day as the events of the Hiroshima bomb, who goes on to narrate a complex love story; the following release explores the ways women express anger: a series of Rashomon-effect psychological stories based around a beautiful widow revisiting her mysterious past in the culturally rich New Orleans.

Notable Press (contact for inquiries harlanvancao8@gmail.com)

NPR: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/10/12/family-in-six-tones-book

Kirkus Reviews:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lan-cao/family-six-tones-refugee/

Harvard Kennedy School: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/library-research-services/collections/community-voices-perspectives/family-six