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A review by hilaryreadsbooks
Straw Dogs of the Universe by Ye Chun
4.0
Ye Chun’s STRAW DOGS OF THE UNIVERSE has the kind of effortlessly gorgeous (yet mature) prose that lends a solemnity to this dark part of American history. Chun’s dexterity with language is not new though—her story collection HAO still remains one of my favorites—but what she brings in STRAW DOGS that’s different from HAO is the sheer amount of historical detail and tangled narration that follows four different Chinese immigrants in Gold Mountain traveling towards converging points in time.
It is the 1870s, and a boat carrying Sixiang and other girls sold to a human trafficker docks in America. A new land, a new master, a new language, and xenophobic antagonism beyond what she can imagine, but this she knows: she is to find her father, who sailed to Gold Mountain for work and disappeared without a trace, and bring him back home. Unbeknownst to Sixiang, her father has created a new life in Gold Mountain, and their impending reunion will not be what she expected. Along with a man from a family with five-generation Daoist priests, a woman who killed her abusive husband and has been running since, and many other unforgettable characters, Sixiang and her father will need to contend with the dangerous landscape of the American West during a time where lynchings of the Chinese and burnings of their homes and communities ran rampant and without consequence, even as they reevaluate transformed meanings of home, love, and family.
If you loved books such as Jenny Tinghui Zhang's FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY and C Pam Zhang’s HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD, particularly the historical parts, you’ll likely love STRAW DOGS. My only wish with STRAW DOGS, as with many historical fictions, was that disablement wasn’t so heavily associated with tragedy! It is of course, as always, important to tie in disability with the historical context—in STRAW DOG’s case, becoming disabled (and unable to work) further amplifies the precarity of finding work as a Chinese immigrant, particularly as a Chinese man. I’ll continue wishing for a reimagining of disability in Chinese American historical fiction though. Thank you Catapult for the gifted copy!
It is the 1870s, and a boat carrying Sixiang and other girls sold to a human trafficker docks in America. A new land, a new master, a new language, and xenophobic antagonism beyond what she can imagine, but this she knows: she is to find her father, who sailed to Gold Mountain for work and disappeared without a trace, and bring him back home. Unbeknownst to Sixiang, her father has created a new life in Gold Mountain, and their impending reunion will not be what she expected. Along with a man from a family with five-generation Daoist priests, a woman who killed her abusive husband and has been running since, and many other unforgettable characters, Sixiang and her father will need to contend with the dangerous landscape of the American West during a time where lynchings of the Chinese and burnings of their homes and communities ran rampant and without consequence, even as they reevaluate transformed meanings of home, love, and family.
If you loved books such as Jenny Tinghui Zhang's FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY and C Pam Zhang’s HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD, particularly the historical parts, you’ll likely love STRAW DOGS. My only wish with STRAW DOGS, as with many historical fictions, was that disablement wasn’t so heavily associated with tragedy! It is of course, as always, important to tie in disability with the historical context—in STRAW DOG’s case, becoming disabled (and unable to work) further amplifies the precarity of finding work as a Chinese immigrant, particularly as a Chinese man. I’ll continue wishing for a reimagining of disability in Chinese American historical fiction though. Thank you Catapult for the gifted copy!