100 books like China Dolls

I did not take to this book right away. Both main characters seemed rigid and selfish in ways that put me off initially. When I came back to the novel some years (decades?) later, I could better see and appreciate the complexity of building a life in racist America of the 1920s. The rigidity that had initially put me off seemed much more understandable as a defense mechanism in a society that was largely hostile to them as women of color.

Giving the book another go, I’ve come to admire the way Larsen uses her characters’ decisions (about whether to pass as white, have children, trust the men they’ve chosen to live with, etc.) to explore complicated ideas surrounding color and race. There are also some scathing indictments of whites, particularly white men that raise some pretty big questions about how race and gender work together, even in our own… show more.

I’m always drawn to books and stories that help me understand communities on their own terms, from the inside out, and this book delivers on that.

Even though this is a book written by scholars, the voices of Buffalo’s mid-twentieth-century lesbian community really guide the book since Kennedy and Davis did hundreds of interviews as a part of their research. I loved hearing from the women themselves, reflecting back on this moment in their lives in this one city, about how they found friends and lovers, negotiated work and family, and navigated the city.  

This 1925 autobiographical novel dropped me into the middle of New York’s Lower East Side Jewish neighborhoods in the early 20th century. The main character has a life of substantial struggle with and against her family, employers, landlords, and an American society that seems intent on erasing her.

While the book has elements of both a classic immigrant story and a coming-of-age tale, I love how it reveals the realities of urban living for a young immigrant woman. The pace and practices of making a home in a too-small space, getting by on minimal resources, scrumming for work, and avoiding harassment fill this book’s chapters. As a social and cultural historian, reading about daily activities–both struggles and joys–in a different time and place helps fire my imagination about not just what happened but how it might have felt to experience it.  

I’m pretty sure this book changed my life. I read it as a freshman in college, and I saw the world differently. I’d never been comfortable with all the judgment heaped on those living in poverty, especially the demonization of black women that was a cultural staple of the 1980s in Ronald Reagan’s America, but until this book, I didn’t have enough knowledge to counter those stereotypes.

Women are the heroes in this book–building strong and caring families and communities in nearly impossible situations. I encountered generosity and loyalty in their stories that I’d never seen in my own middle-class upbringing. This book is also a model for how I try to move through the world. Carol Stack went in as an outsider, seeking to learn, not judge. She honored the people she studied as experts on their own experience and demonstrated that by living in their community under their… show more.

You will never look at (or wear) a kimono the same way after reading Amy Sueyoshi’s ingenious investigation into the making of an American leisure culture awash in stereotypes of Japanese and Chinese sexuality. With a focus on San Francisco, Sueyoshi’s book reveals how Anglo-European Americans appropriated “Oriental” dress and design aesthetics, even as the white press and legal system displayed overt hostility toward people of Asian descent. This book is one of my very favorites among a growing body of work that centers on the making of racial identities within histories of sexuality. Sueyoshi is a superb writer, and in this book, she excels at honoring the humanity of Asian-descended people within a white leisure culture that insisted on their inferiority.

Amy Tan is a master at telling stories that explore the complex dynamics of family relationships.

I’ve read a lot of her books, but The Hundred Secret Senses is my favorite because I adore Kwan, the main character’s half-sister from China. Kwan has a special secret that she can see and speak to ghosts, but Olivia always dismisses her as a little crazy and only pretends to believe her stories.

I love this book because it made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions and because it was so relatable.

We all have family members that we both love and can’t stand at the same time. This book goes back and forth between the 1990s and the 1800s.

If you love books about sisters, you need to read this one!

An absolute tour de force from the author of The Joy Luck Club. This novel is not as famous, but it’s actually my favourite Tan book. It has that epic sweep across history that I adore, whereby the movement of history catches people in its wake and hurls them hither and thither, uncaring of the consequences of its wreckage. The novel follows the experiences of a Chinese woman before and after Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and 40s and on to her move to America after the war. Reading this novel was truly immersive and fueled my interest in writing about war and showing how my own characters are caught up in its inexorable flow. A brutal and beautiful novel. 

I was completely immersed in this novel. Through her exploration of Chinese-American culture, Amy Tan draws us deeply into the intricate relationships between the mothers in this book and their daughters.

Cross-generational and cross-cultural, Tan skillfully portrays the conflicts within these friendships—both among the mothers and between mothers and daughters—ultimately demonstrating the power of understanding and forgiveness.

Stanford isn’t a happy camper when, because of a failing grade in English, he has to go to summer school instead of basketball camp. Used to being a star basketball player, he’s embarrassed by this new turn of events. Millicent Min as his tutor is the last straw. I love how the plot and various situations, along with his parents’ bickering and his grandmother entering a nursing home, feel real and something today’s kids can relate to. And also how, despite Stanford’s disappointments, he puts forth his best efforts all the while he tries to manage his problems. There’s plenty of humor, too.

Taking a transnational frame and drawing on English- and Chinese-language sources by and about Eurasians, this book uses juxtaposition to bring different perspectives to bear on each other. People’s lives, the choices they make amid various external limitations, are at the heart. The book takes a unique structural approach, with a prologue before each main chapter that describes a central story and helps ground and guide the larger narrative. In exploring interracial marriages and the lives of couples and children, the work shows how Eurasians have been producers of knowledge. Through highly diverse sources from the era, the author demonstrates that Eurasians have engaged in self-representation in complex ways and a broad range of voices and experiences comprise the category “Eurasian.”