Kathryn Ma's The Chinese Groove was first published in late January 2023 by Counterpoint. It follows an eighteen-year-old boy named Shelley Zheng, whose family is reviled in her hometown Yunnan Province. He spends his days dreaming of a bigger and better life filled with more opportunities. His father, however, is consumed with grief. And that grief starts to consume Shelley, too. Eventually, Shelley escapes from that toxicity and goes to San Francisco in the United States, where he hopes his life will change for the better. But once he arrives in the United States, he finds that things in the so-called promised land aren't what his family had claimed them to be. His uncle isn't rich, his family isn't strong, and he doesn't have a long-term, secure living situation. Still, despite these challenges and roadblocks, Shelley works hard to create a good life for himself and live out the American dream.
When it was published in 2023, critical reviews for The Chinese Groove were largely positive. Some, like Kirkus Reviews, loved Ma's novel and said that she "knows how to twist a plot in unexpected, deeply satisfying directions by writing with compassion, humor, and insight." Others liked Ma's novel to a lesser extent. The New York Times called The Chinese Groove "overly optimistic" but pointed to Ma's writing and the comedy in the novel as its high points.
