Post by janetandjohn on Oct 9, 2018 8:04:33 GMT
Peter Ho Davies let me into a world I knew nothing of. The Chinese in America. They built the railways.......because their families sent them from China to America at the time of the gold rush - to find gold, get rich, bring it home. That didn't work well, so they were hired in thousands to build the first rail systems on the West Coast. Did they go home? No. Families dead, they stayed on; and formed the backbone of Chinese Americans in the US today. Four stories, tenuously linked, start in the 1860s and end in current times when a half Chinese man and his all American white wife visit China today for the first time to adopt a child.
What's it like to be "different"? I was astounded by the prejudice shown. I knew of Anna May Wong, a popular Chinese American who starred in silent movies ..... but was unable to marry because of the law in California which stopped whites marrying "others". As if that wasn't enough, a screen kiss was forbidden also. I didn't know of the death of Vincent Chin in1982 - and when I read the reason I was stunned. I found that racial prejudice does not just lean towards black or dark skins and was amazed how brutal the prejudice has been. What a writer Peter Ho Davies is. Half Chinese himself, he hails from Wales and lives in Michigan..... so I think he knows his subject. A gripping read for me.
[copy of my Amazon review]