BG 2 – May, 2023
The Girl who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes
The novel is an historical fiction that tells a story of two women from different centuries, whose lives are intertwined. The novel explores themes of race, belonging and acceptance. The role of race in the novel is to highlight the discrimination and prejudice that people of colour faced in the past and even today. The novel explores the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact on the immigrants in the United States of America.
As with many historical fiction novels, it has an historical storyline and a contemporary one.
The contemporary story follows Inara Erickson, a young woman from Seattle who is fresh out of graduate school. Inara has recently inherited her family's estate on Orcas Island. Her decision to forgo a lucrative job opportunity with Starbucks to turn the estate into a boutique hotel is met with significant opposition by her family, but Inara perseveres in order to see her vision come to fruition. Inara wasn't afraid to take big risks to preserve the land and home she loved. Things do take a turn when Inara discovers a hidden silk sleeve beneath a step. The sleeve has gorgeous embroidery that seems to be telling a tragic tale. As Inara begins to investigate the sleeve and its origins, she turns up family secrets long since buried and is faced with a moral dilemma. The sleeve connects to the historical story which follows Mei Lin, a young Chinese woman living in Seattle during the 1880's. Mei Lien was born in Seattle and has never known her family's native land, but that doesn't matter on the afternoon when the white men in the city round up every Chinese person they can find and force them on a ship bound for China.
All along the Pacific Coast, those of Chinese descent are being forced to flee after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The act was intended to prohibit immigration of Chinese laborers. Not all, but many white citizens in the Pacific Northwest feared the Chinese would take their jobs or ruin their culture. The treatment the Chinese received in this novel, and in that time period, were heart-breaking. This book is informative, compelling, and thought provoking. Mei Lien, the protagonist of the novel, is excluded from the society because of her race and represents the Chinese immigrant who faced discrimination and persecution in Seattle. Inara represents a modern-day woman seeking her place in the world.
This book is an easy read and as captivating as the books title and cover
Our Book Group rated the book 6/10
Review by Neena Chandola