Told as a series of anecdotes from a Jewish grandmother, Addie Baum, to her granddaughter Ava, The Boston Girl is a coming-of-age story set in the early 1900s. Addie’s parents have fled an unnamed country in Europe, and Addie is the first child born in the United States. Her father and sister work in a sweatshop, and the family lives in a tenement. Addie’s parents expect her to leave school after 8th grade and start working. Central to the story…
Min Jin Lee spent 30 years working on Pachinko, an intriguing novel about Korean immigrants in Japan before, during, and after World War II. The story begins slowly, in the manner of a 19th century novel, with information about the family background of the main character, Sunja. She is born on a small Korean island to a couple who run a boarding house. Some years before her birth, Japan took over Korea, and Koreans had to live like second-class citizens…
I’m not sure how to describe this beautiful novel. On one level, it is a mysterious love story between a Chinese prostitute, Fusang, in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1860’s and 1870’s and a white boy of German heritage, Chris. On another level it is an exploration of a Chinese immigrant woman at the beginning of the 21st century attempting to research Fusang as a way of understanding the history of Chinese people in San Francisco, as well as the…