![]() ![]() (“A model of industry,” Crocker says of Ling to a pair of Siamese twins. The first, set in the mid-19th century, focuses on Ling, whose fastidious and imperturbably dogged performance as manservant to rail magnate Charles Crocker inspires "Mister Charley" to consider hiring a vast workforce of Chinese immigrants to help lay down tracks for the first transcontinental railroad. You could, if you wished, refer to this blend of historically inspired narratives as The Birth of a Chinese-American Nation, as Davies ( The Welsh Girl, 2007, etc.) encompasses whole eras of history, transition, and even consciousness in the four stories that make up this novel. A four-part suite of astute, lyrical, and often poignant stories poses incisive questions about what changes-and what does not-when people from another culture become Americans. ![]()
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