Eureka

Chang (With My Back to the World, for adults) vividly renders discrimination and racism experienced by those of Chinese heritage in 1880s California through the eyes of a 12-year-old Chinese immigrant in this dynamic verse novel. In 1884 San Francisco, Mei Mei is not permitted by law to attend public school with American children. Instead, she’s educated by white teachers in the basement of a church, and learns reading and writing in her native Cantonese at a Chinese school. Using her big strong feet—so unlike Ma Ma’s bound ones, “each broken toe like a lotus flower petal”—Mei Mei explores her neighborhood. But her independence is soon curtailed when, worried about increasing violence toward Chinese people, her parents send her to live with relatives up north in Eureka, believing it to be safer than San Francisco. But in Eureka, Mei Mei’s aunt arranges for the tween to work as a kitchen aide for a rich white family. During her employ, she’s taunted by the family’s racist son, Lester, and secretly befriends their daughter Sara, who furthers Mei Mei’s English education. First-person verse depicts the conditions of the period, viscerally establishing the wrenching baseline of bias and cruelty that saw Chinese residents living in wooden shacks while white families resided in multistory row houses with big windows. A contextualizing author’s note details the passing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Ages 10–14. (Jan.)