Straw Dogs of the Universe

May 1, 2023

In the midst of famine, 10-year-old Sixiang's mother sells her to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and some coins, hoping that she will find a better life in 19th-century California. Once there, Sixiang sets out to find her railroad worker father in a country fraught with violence and anti-Chinese sentiment. Ye's debut story collection, Hao, was long-listed for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Prepub Alert.

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September 1, 2023
Chinese immigrants grapple with violent racism in 19th-century California. Ye, a poet, short story writer, and translator, begins her first novel in 1876 as, amid famine in rural China, 10-year-old Sixiang is sold into quasi-slavery by her grandmother. Soon, the girl is on a ship bound for California and a life of toil and exploitation. But Sixiang (her name means "remember home") is no "straw dog of the universe," which is to say, she doesn't perceive herself to be "spent and disposable." So spirited that even as a small child she refused to endure ritual foot-binding, Sixiang has an agenda of her own: She intends to find and retrieve her father, Guifeng, who came to America to build the transcontinental railroad before she was born and has since vanished. It's a bold, naive plan worthy of a Disney cartoon heroine and Sixiang would make an exemplary one. Chapter by chapter, Ye weaves together the harrowing stories of Sixiang and Guifeng as well as Feiyan, the fiery woman Guifeng loves, and Daoshi, a Taoist priest who tries to preach and practice spiritual detachment, "not accumulating more than the bare minimum, nor craving more than a few diversions." The quartet of immigrants endures whippings, diabolical bosses, sanctimonious missionaries, leg amputation, brothel work, sexual assault, opium addiction, opium withdrawal, existential despair and, above all, nonstop abuse at the hands of monstrous gweilo (white people), who are sneering at best, murderous at worst. "They were all the same," one character reflects. "All wanted to see the Chinese burn and die." Setting her novel amid well-documented episodes of anti-Asian violence, Ye imagines a ghastly and luridly perilous world reminiscent of a horror story. A choppy, fast-paced historical novel informed by a 21st-century critique of whiteness.

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October 2, 2023
Ye (the collection Hao) offers a heartbreaking story of anti-Chinese racism in 19th-century California. Amid a famine in 1876 China, 10-year-old Siaxing’s mother sells her to human traffickers who will take her to the U.S., where her father, Guifeng, immigrated to before she was born. In San Francisco, she’s forced to work as a nanny for a wealthy Chinese family, then rescued by members of a Christian ministry. She becomes a housekeeper for a white family and befriends a neighboring Chinese boy. Just when things seem to be looking up, the two are attacked by a racist mob, including a member of the family that employs her. A parallel narrative follows Guifeng’s own hardships and attempts to build a life. After helping a woman named Feiyan escape from sex slavery, he settles with her and their child in Truckee, Calif.’s bustling Chinatown. After he’s shot in the leg during a scuffle at a lumber camp, Guifeng’s leg is amputated and he subsequently falls into opium addiction. When Siaxing finally finds Guifeng in 1882, rising Sinophobia has become an existential threat for the region’s Chinese community. Ye’s clear-eyed depictions of the characters’ internal struggles elevates what could be a litany of tragedies into a heroic story of survival. Readers will be moved. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary.

Starred review from September 1, 2023
Ye follows the prodigious stories that comprised Hao (2021), expanding upon the prowess she proved with abbreviated fiction into a wondrous first novel. Here her exquisite chapters could easily stand alone but, interlinked, they create an intricate mosaic gloriously revealing intertwined lives. Ten-year-old Sixiang, "meaning 'remember home, ' so that she would never forget where she came from," arrives in Gold Mountain with six silver coins--the trafficker's buying price offered to her mother and grandmother, who believed Sixiang's life could only be saved from famine by leaving. Sixiang is tasked with somehow finding and returning with her father, Guifeng, whom she's never met and knows only by a single photograph. In San Francisco's Chinatown, she's sold as a servant, "rescued" by a Christian mission, and guided by a would-be Daoist priest. Meanwhile, Guifeng is among the Chinese thousands building the transcontinental railroad. He reunites with the running girl who was his 12-year-old first love, but they are repeatedly driven out again and again: "In this world, you either found yourself hunted down or pointing a gun at the hunter," the priest observes. Ye's tale revolves around the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act when explosive anti-Chinese violence too often proved fatal, and resonates with the present spikes in anti-Asian hate. Ye offers another haunting, edifying, and illuminating literary feast.

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