The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

Title:  The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

Author:  Jamie Ford

Publication Information:  Atria Books. 2022. 384 pages.

ISBN:  1982158212 / 978-1982158217

Rating:  ★★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Faye May signed a contract stating that she would never marry."

Favorite Quote:  "If you plant an acorn ... it may grow to become an oak tree. Yet there is no acorn within that wooden body. Has the acorn been reborn as a tree? Or does the acorn grow up to be something else entirely? It's my belief that the acorn and the tree are an idea, spread out over an abstraction of time. And if that new tree, when fully grown, drops one acorn or a thousand, that idea keeps progressing as this thing we call life."

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a story of war and the destruction war brings even far away from the battlefield. Songs of Willow Frost builds upon the history of the early days of the film industry and events like the massacre at Seattle Wah Mee Club. Love and Other Consolation Prizes also pays homage to the author's ancestry and the Asian American experience. It also builds upon a little known yet horrifying historical incident. All three books begin in Seattle which is where Jamie Ford grew up.

In that way, this book is no different. Its basis is in history of the Asian American immigrant experience. There was an actual Afong Moy. She is said to be the first known female immigrant brought to the United States from China. Entrepreneurs Nathaniel and Frederick Carne brought her to New York City, advertising her as an exotic display - her bound feet, her looks, and her overall appearance. The "exhibit" or "show" toured the country. Sadly, as the show and its popularity disappeared, so did all traces of Afong Moy. It is not known what happened to her.

This book build on this history and the research on generational trauma. The study of this trauma and epigenetic transmission is a relatively young field, with much still to be learned. In that way, this book is very different from Jamie Ford's other books. It travels to the past and the future - what was, the history and the trauma, and what may yet be. Embedded in this story is also a love that transcends time and place. The women of the book are:

• Dorothy Moy, a poet and a mother to a five year old girl, trying to break the pattern.
• Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers;
• Zoe Moy, a student in England;
• Lai King Moy, a girl in San Francisco during an epidemic;
• Greta Moy, a tech executive;
• Afong Moy.

It takes a while to settle into the book and the different timelines. It takes a longer while to settle into the fact that this book is more the presentation of an idea than a plot line beginning to end. It is about trauma compounded through generations. It is about efforts to counter that trauma. It is about hope for the future in science. In the future, it has elements of post-apocalyptic science fiction. 

I lack knowledge of the scientific ideas of the book. It leaves me thinking, and I will remember it. It also sends me in the direction to perhaps read some more about the scientific topic itself

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Love and Other Consolation Prizes

Title:  Love and Other Consolation Prizes

Author:  Jamie Ford

Publication Information:  Ballantine Books. 2017. 320 pages.

ISBN:  0804176752 / 978-0804176750

Book Source:  I received this book as a publisher's galley through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Ernest Young stodd outside the gates on opening day of the new world's fair, loitering in the shadow of the futre."

Favorite Quote:  "We all have things we don't talk about ... Even though, more often than not, those are the things that make us who we are."

Love and Other Consolation Prizes is a love set in the middle of the red light district of Seattle in the early 1900s amidst the glitz and fanfare of the Alaska Yukon Pacific (AYK) Exposition. It is a love story of teenagers forced by circumstance to grow up and live adult lives well before their age warranted. It is a love story that lasts over fifty years until the next Seattle World Fair. Exactly whose love story is the question that remains unanswered until close to the end of the book.

Ernest Young is born into poverty in China. His mother obtains him passage to the United States when he is twelve in the hopes of a better life for him. His journey leads him to an orphanage and a workhouse. It leads him to the be a prize raffled off at the World's Fair. Yes, a human boy becomes a raffle prize. This horrifying circumstance leads him to the brothels of Seattle and sets the course of his remaining life for as a houseboy in a brothel, he finds friendship and love. Fahn is young woman working as a housemaid in the brothel. Maisie is the Madam's daughter. The three are close in age and form a trio of friends.

Fast forward fifty years. Ernest is an old man living a quiet life. His two daughters are living their lives - one as a journalist and one as a dancer in Las Vegas. His wife suffers from dementia-like symptoms and has fading memories of her life with Ernest.

His daughter discovers the story of Ernest's childhood and the raffle and wants to investigate and learn more. This sets Ernest down memory lane. Through past and present, the story of Ernest, Maisie, and Fahn is revealed. Around it is built the colorful world of Seattle and the World's Fair.

As with Jamie Ford's other books (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost, this book pays homage to his ancestry and the Asian American experience. All three books begin in Seattle which is where Jamie Ford grew up. Songs of Willow Frost also begins with a young boy growing up in an orphanage. Perhaps enough time has passed between my reading the two books or perhaps the stories are different enough, despite the similarities, the books do not feel formulaic. It will be interesting to see if he keeps to the same locales and the same themes in his works moving forward.

The most horrifying piece of the history in this book is true. During the AYK, an infant (not a twelve year old) named Ernest was indeed the prize of a raffle. History says that a winning ticket was picked, but the "prize" was never claimed. What happened to the baby has never been resolved. There are no words to describe such an event; yet, it is a piece of history I would never have known but for the home it finds in this fiction.

Two things draw me to Jamie Ford's books; in this too, the three books are similar. The first is that the books envelop the reader in their world - the sights, the sounds, the smells. I feel as if I am there experiencing the history. The other is his ability to draw sympathetic characters and to elicit that emotion. That keeps me engaged in the story. For that, I look forward to the next book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

After the Bloom

Title:  After the Bloom

Author:  Leslie Shimotakahara

Publication Information:  Dundum. 2017. 328 pages.

ISBN:  1459737431 / 978-1459737433

Book Source:  I received this book as a publisher's galley through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Their house had always been a wreck."

Favorite Quote:  "For so long no one talked about anything - it was like those memories of the internment years never even existed. Massive blackouts, collective amnesia. Just put it all behind you, block it all out, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move the **** on. The first step in rebuilding community is allowing those memories to surface."

After the Bloom is a story structured in a commonly used framework - two time periods, two women, a daughter trying to untangle the puzzle of her mother. The broader context of the past is a sad part of United States history - the internment of the Japanese in the United States during World War. The reprecussions of this history are felt today in the community who suffered through it and in others who fear that history may one day repeat itself.

Many books have taken this approach to this history - The Japanese Lover by Isabelle Allende, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, and perhaps my favorite, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. The history is a sad and shameful one as citizens of the country were stripped of rights and freedom and treated as potential criminals because of their ethnic heritage. This book takes a different approach to the camps in that it does not just show the conditions and privations forced from the outside. It also shows the strife within as different people struggle to deal with this reality. There is talk of peace and acceptance, and there is talk of rebellion.

The personal story in this book is that of Lily Takemitsu, who is a young adult when her family is forced into interment. Hers is a story of the camp but also a story of a young woman who seems to have no healthy male relationships ever in her life. She talks about neither, such that her daughter Rita has no idea what her mother has gone through. Rita's life is 1980s Toronto with a mother who disappears. Rita is not surprise as this has happened before, but this time, Lily does not return and cannot be found. In her search, Rita discovers the truth of her mother's past and of her own heritage.

What I find intriguing is the theme of shame and something not to be talked about that is evident throughout the book. Lily feels the shame of her background and never talked about it to her daughter or her husband. Those in the internment camps are wrongly made to feel ashamed of their heritage. The country is ashamed of this history such that kids grow up not ever learning about it. The glimmer of a bigger message is there in the book; it just never makes its way forcefully out.

The key to a historical fiction for me is the balance between history and fiction. The fiction should bring the history to life and bring emotion to historical facts; the characters become anchors for the history. By the same token, the history should become the central drama and conflict of the fictional story.

In this book, the fiction and the history take two different paths. While Lily's story is set in the World War II internment camps, it is much more of a story of a young woman with troubling relationships - her father, her daughter's father, and others she meets at the camp. The same story could be set in a completely different context and still be essential the same personal story.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

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Songs of Willow Frost

Title:  Songs of Willow Frost

Author:  Jamie Ford

Publication Information:  Ballantine Books, The Random House Publishing Group, Random House, Inc. 2013. 331 pages.

Book Source:  I read this book based on how much I enjoyed the author's first book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Favorite Quote:  "The uncomfortable truth is that no one is all bad, or all good. Not mother and fathers, sons and daughters, or husbands and wives. Life would be much easier if that were the case. Instead, everyone ... was a confusing mix of love and hate, joy and sorrow, longing and forgetting, misguided truth and painful deception."

Willow Frost is a Chinese American actress. William Eng is a twelve year old Chinese American boy living in an orphanage. He has lived there for five years since his mother's body was carried away from their apartment in Seattle. He remembers a life before; he remembers his mother's love.

One day, as a special treat, the orphanage children are taken to the movies. He sees Willow Frost on the screen and believes that she is his mother, Liu Song, even though he has believed that she died. He and his friend Charlotte, a young blind resident of the orphanage, run away to find Willow Frost.

The story continues with William's, Charlotte's, but most of all Willow Frost's story. The reader learns a story of abuse, loss, love, betrayal, and the difficult choice of a parent. Set in the twenties and the Depression, it becomes also a story of the times and the struggles of people who could not provide for their children. The historical references to the early days of the film industry and events like the massacre at Seattle Wah Mee Club provide the backdrop to this story.

The book is predictable - the story of William's birth, Charlotte's story, even the ending. The other incongruous note in the book is that William and Charlotte are so young. Yet, the insight the characters show is well beyond their years. You might say that this makes the book somewhat unrealistic or you might choose to say that the traumatic experiences of their children makes them older than their chronological age. I choose to go with the latter interpretation.

The bottom line is that Jamie Ford weaves such an emotionally gripping tale that the other things don't matter. The emotions hit you even as you anticipate them. The age of the characters ceases to matter as you feel their sense of pain and abandonment and even joy.

Loved Jamie Ford's first book. Loved this one. Can't wait to see what comes next.