Book No. 28 of 2020
I think I would have really enjoyed this book as a kid/teen; it’s classic YA historical fiction, and focuses on aspects of history typically left out of textbooks. The protagonist, Jo, is a Chinese-American girl in Reconstruction-era Georgia; I learned from this book that Chinese laborers were brought to the South after the Civil War. Jo also tangles with various chapters of the suffragist movement, and the book is unflinching about the racism that ran rampant through white suffragist groups, as well as the complexity of being another level of “other” in a society grappling with binary-level racism.
Lots of YA hallmarks in here: secret family/parentage plot twists, adults who *just don’t get it*, fairly obvious examples of injustice/racism/sexism, spunky heroine pointing out said injustices, a budding romance sprinkled with misunderstanding, the culmination of plot at a Big Public Event, etc.
Similar Reads
This book reminded me of Laurence Yep’s The Journal of Wong-Ming Chung, from the My Name is America series.
Also reminded me of Laurence Yep’s Spring Pearl: The Last Flower (from the Girls of Many Lands series).
Very similar themes as “All the Flavors,” a short story from Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie.
Super different vibe, but the “yellow in a black and white world” theme is explored deeply in Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown.