Four Treasures of the Sky: The compelling debut about identity and belonging in the 1880s American West

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I think what kept me from giving it a perfect 5 stars is that this book was set in the late 1800’s but it felt too modern at times. The protagonist has the same name as a tragic mythical heroine, and their “relationship” definitely adds to the story. At the age of thirteen, she is kidnapped and trafficked to San Francisco (smuggled across the ocean in a barrel of coal) and sold to a brothel. You are best going into this with a little information as possible but it is certainly an eye opener.

From the story of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of China’s four great classic novels, Lin Daiyu is a poet who fell in love with a boy above her in the pyramid of social hierarchy. Four Treasures of the Sky" by debut author Jenny Tinghi Zhang is a powerful, eye-opening work of historical fiction which highlights a little known chapter in American history. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. The writing is persuasive and lyrical and Daiyu's account of learning English is exquisite, but the narrative does sometimes threaten to overwhelm the reader's ability to suspend disbelief.Daiyu, a young Chinese girl endures losses she doesn’t understand, is forced to leave her home in Zhifu, China in 1882 to stay safe and survive. This novel comes at a time when another uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes has become major headline news and anti-Chinese sentiments lurk about. First Daiyu, then Feng, followed by Peony, and now Jacob Li working in the Old West in the mining town of Pierce, Idaho. Daiyu’s interactions with the spirit of her fictional namesake Lin Daiyu that act as her inner voice and conscience throughout her journey, are depicted with much feeling and emotion as are Daiyu’s memories of Master Wang’s teachings and how she applies those principles in her life. I wish that this author’s note was at the beginning of the story instead of the end, so I could better prepare myself for what is to come, which is a story of emotional devastation caused by the real life actions of our own history as Americans.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Her work has appeared in Apogee, Ninth Letter, Passages North, The Rumpus, HuffPost, The Cut, Catapult, and more.Four Treasures of the sky gives a voice to those whose story has been taken away- rewritten and revised.

Although Daiyu grapples with the legacy of her name throughout the novel, there is a more immediate cause of her ill fortune: the sudden flight of her parents, whose practice of sheltering members of a secret society opposed to the Qing court has landed them in danger. The side characters involved are written richly and create a great sense of a real community which is facing such deep opposition to their very existence. When I am kidnapped, I am thirteen and standing in the middle of the Zhifu fish market on Beach Road, watching a fleshy woman assemble white fish the shape of spades into a pile. To say Four Treasures of the Sky is unflinching doesn’t do justice to the miraculous way in which Jenny Tinghui Zhang paints a neglected chapter in American history with sharp and devastating brushstrokes. Aspects of the Chinese migration that you not always hear about: like kidnapping Chinese to be used/sold as labour in America; the abuse and injustice suffered my Chinese migrants after(and before!

Her troubles begin with her name; Daiyu’s eponym is Lin Daiyu, a tragic figure of legend who dies spitting blood after the family of her beloved tricks him into marrying someone else. forced to do hard labor work, forced to learn English, forced into sexual coercion > all these really awful things…. She knows immediately who I am, sees the gnawing in my belly, an insistence that hollows all the things it touches. The different radicals that go into a Chinese character, every stroke coalescing into a beautiful little almost-poem, inform Daiyu’s narration as she struggles to make sense of the cruel world around her. Daiyu always resented being named after a tragic heroine of Chinese literature (Lin Daiyu from Cao Xueqin's classic 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber), fearing that it would be ominous.

A dazzling combination of history, unforgettable voice and Chinese mythology that promises much more to come from this bright and devastating new talent. Four Treasures of the Sky is a lovely debut with a lot of heart and a wonderful depth of knowledge and history. The best historical fiction novels uncover a forgotten part of history, and this book definitely did that for me.This book is haunting , luscious and precise - it's historical fiction as we most want and need it to be .