Lives of the Family

By Denise Chong,

Book cover of Lives of the Family: Stories of Fate & Circumstance

Book description

International bestselling author of The Concubine's Children, Denise Chong returns to the subject of her most beloved book, the lives and times of Canada's early Chinese families.
     In 2011, Denise Chong set out to collect the history of the earliest Chinese settlers in and around Ottawa, who made their homes…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Lives of the Family as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Denise Chong explores a similar period of Chinese Canadian history in Lives of the Family: Stories of Fate & Circumstance. Similar to my own book, Lives of the Family looks beyond Vancouver and British Columbia Chinatowns to tell the story of Chinese Canadian migrants, whose lives straddled continents, who ran successful businesses, and were involved with the KMT. 

From Alison's list on to reimagine Chinatown.

If you love Lives of the Family...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like Lives of the Family?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Lives of the Family.

Browse books like Lives of the Family

Book cover of Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
Book cover of Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking
Book cover of Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era, 1885-1945

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,881

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Lives of the Family, you might also like...

Book cover of Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds

Radical Friend by Nancy A. Hewitt,

Radical Friend highlights the remarkable life of Amy Kirby Post, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights activist who created deep friendships across the color line to promote social justice. Her relationships with Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, William C. Nell, and other Black activists from the 1840s to the…

Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in China, Canada, and Han Chinese?

China 663 books
Canada 453 books
Han Chinese 32 books