The Fortunes

“It was more than two years since the end of the war and the shooting of the president, the skinny one with the whiskery, wizened face of a wise ape -who had first decreed the overland railroad.”

This novel is in dialogue with many important historical events of the 19th and 20th centuries and is particularly interested in the way that those events have impacted and shaped Chinese American communities. Here, the author references the assassination of President Lincoln, but also connects Lincoln to the history of Chinese Americans through his role in the burgeoning railway industry, one of the first major employers of immigrants from China.

“Half the laundries are brothels, Ng explained cheerfully. Good business! There’s a dozen fellows to every woman in this state.”

This passage, in which Uncle Ng explains more about his business to Ling, grounds the text within the history of Chinese immigration to the United States, particularly the west coast, in the 19th century. This first wave of Chinese immigrants was almost entirely male, and they came to the United States to work in industries such as the building of the new American railway system. Their labor was exploited and they were subject to much anti-Chinese prejudice.

“They’d been waiting for him earlier than usual, and when they pulled his hair he’d stumbled, gone down on one knee in a runnel of horse piss, still warm.”

This passage describes how groups of white men and boys would harass Chinese workers and even engage in acts of racist violence against them. It speaks to the thematic focus on Anti-Asian Racism in this novel but is also a moment of connection to the history of Chinese American communities in California during the first large immigration wave of the 19th century.