A review by voara
Disappearing Moon Cafe by Sky Lee

4.0

Read this for class. I arrived in Vancouver a month ago and still feel completely new to this place and its culture and history. I saw and felt so much through this book—I think my future experiences of Vancouver's Chinatown will be directly informed by this novel lol. It's hard for me to say but as a standalone story it might not be all that interesting if you aren't reading with intention or interest in gaining insight into Chinese Canadian history or Asian Canadian diaspora. But sometimes a work is compelling for its contextual significance: this is the first Chinese Canadian novel to be published by mainstream (English) press—the first time Chinese Canadian history was made available in the novel format. Sky Lee takes on a huge responsibility in telling this story and she is clearly very well informed about the history: the railway, the head tax, the exclusion act, the Janet Smith case, the Chinese Canadians' relation to Indigenous people—the novel is very rich in historical events. As an Asian migrant myself this book felt important to me and I felt obliged to absorb all that it had to offer :]