★★★★★ 5
Atlanta During the 1890's
Format: Paperback
Whether you like The Downstairs Girl or not depends on what you crave. If you crave historical fiction that will teach you, or that helps you realize the myriad of things that were going on in a certian place and time (Atlanta during the 1890s, or an imaginative author who never use trite metaphors or similes, you will love this book. Or if you want to quickly turn pages, you will be disappointed. If you want a simple plot, do not read this book. If you want an intricately spun story with plenty of mystrey, humor and many surprises, you will love it.
Jo Kuan is a Chinese American without voting rights, deStined to be a servang and doesn;t knw who her mother or father are, lives in a basement of a family with Old Gin who she thinks of as old man who adopted not offically but out of love. Chinese Americans were brought into the South after the Civil War to take over what slaves used to do but instead of no pay, they got tiny pay. You could walk or take a streetcar to work. Blacks sat the back of the streetcars, but if you were Chinese American, you didn't know where you sat or were told to gat off. They could not own or rent, where were you supposed to live; It was the start of Jim Crow laws and of cocoa cola. Women suffragettes started working towards the vote of white women. This was not a quiet oeriod of history.
I thoroughly enjoyed this peak at Atlanta in the 1890's through an Asian American young woman's eyes, ears and even her nose.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2022
