Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See

An enjoyable and well-written generational story set between the 1930’s and post-World War II, but what was most interesting to me was the history and politics behind the novel. The book follows the fortunes of a pair of “beautiful girls” (sisters who pose for calendar art) from pampered, Westernized young women in Shanghai, to brides for “paper sons” in Los Angeles. Chinese immigrants to this country faced a century’s old history of discrimination and exclusion, which only increased their ingenuity in finding ways to get around the law (hence, “paper sons,” who could purchase a “slot” left empty by a dead legal child, and the large number of illegal immigrants who claimed to have been born in San Francisco after the earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed birth records). However I didn’t realize that, “the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 significantly altered U.S.-China relations and intensified conflict among Chinese American political groups. As the Korean War turned China into an archenemy of the United States, many Chinese Americans lived in fear of political accusations. In the name of investigating Communist subversive activities, the U.S. government launched an all-out effort to break up Chinese immigration networks. The investigation further divided the Chinese American community. When the Justice Department began the "Chinese confession program" in 1956 (it ended in 1966), even family members were pressured to turn against one another.” Like first learning of Japanese internment camps, it was an eye-opener for me. 314 pp.