Water Ghosts

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Overview

In her debut novel, Shawna Yang Ryan presents a mesmerizing story of a community of Chinese immigrants in a small California town in 1928, weaving history and mythology around the lives of the townspeople and the ghosts who haunt them.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

A dreamlike haze shimmers over Ryan's debut, the tale of a real-life immigrants' enclave in early 20th-century California. In the mining town of Locke outside Sacramento, Richard Fong's Lucky Fortune casino and Poppy See's brothel provide the only entertainment for Chinese workers sending their wages back to the families they can't bring into the country. For Chloe, a white prostitute who is Richard's favorite, it's also a place to hide from her family just a few towns over. Mired in the past, the town's residents are jolted into the present when three strange Chinese women, including Richard's long-lost wife, arrive during the Dragon Boat Festival looking for their husbands. After years of her absence, Richard struggles to adapt his bachelor lifestyle to accommodate a woman who has become a stranger to him, and Chloe dreams of starting over somewhere new when Richard abandons her bed. Ryan's fluid flashbacks allow the past to sweep over the collective population of Locke, and her elegant female protagonists manage to exercise their own agency even when they're hemmed in by life in Locke. (Apr.)

Library Journal

This loosely historical piece set in 1928 centers on the lives of the Chinese and white residents of Locke, CA. The alcoholic Madam (Poppy) See, proprietor of the town's whorehouse, takes a pregnant, teenage Chloe Howell on as one of her girls, only to lose her lover, Richard Fong, to Chloe. Adding to this mix are Corlissa Lee, a white woman married to the local Chinese preacher, who assists three women smuggled from China, one being Richard's wife. Ryan's writing is reminiscent of that of Amy Tan and Lisa See because she incorporates elements of ghosts and tales of Chinese folklore and frequently provides backstories for her characters. As a whole, Ryan's debut feels forced, as the story moves slowly and meanders without providing enough significance to the nine principal characters she identifies in the book's opening. Several of them seem more like the minor characters that Ryan also lists. Despite this, Ryan's work maintains a lyrical and haunting quality throughout. Overall, this finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award is a good first effort, but only libraries with considerable budgets or demand for such historical works need consider.
—Shirley N. Quan

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Kirkus Reviews

Using a handful of characters, debut novelist Ryan offers impressions of a Chinese-American community in 1920s California. Richard Fong is in bed with Chloe in a brothel. Down the hall, Poppy See mourns his abandonment of her, while on the river a craft bearing three mystery women gatecrashes the Dragon Boat Festival. The author offers a historically accurate portrait of Locke, an agricultural settlement near Sacramento leased to the Chinese by a white owner. The men work on the local ranches picking fruit and vegetables. We learn that 38-year-old Richard manages a gambling hall, that 17-year-old Chloe, the only Caucasian in the brothel, is his favored whore, that Poppy is the madam and that the arrival of the smuggled "boat-women" is a pivotal event. One of them is Ming Wai, who married Richard ten years earlier, in 1918, and lost face when he left China without her. Her two companions, given sanctuary in the church, have dozens of suitors in a town where men outnumber women 20 to one, but Ryan scants the comic/dramatic potential of this setup by skittishly turning her attention to other characters or evoking their pasts in their Chinese homeland. There's a second, lightly sketched interracial relationship involving a Chinese pastor and his white wife, whose teenage daughter, a stereotypical danger-courting runaway, has become friendly with Chloe. The only real plotline traces Richard's violent breakup with Chloe after his wife arrives; Poppy, a soothsayer, believes all three boat-women are water ghosts. The novel's supernatural and realistic elements compete awkwardly for dominance. The supposed ghosts get their chance to wreak havoc when the levees break, but despite a number of deathstheir status remains a mystery. Fascinating material clumsily shaped. Author events out of San Francisco. Agent: Daniel Lazar/Writers House

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781594202070
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 4/16/2009
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 826,127
Product dimensions: 8.52 (w) x 5.90 (h) x 0.96 (d)

Meet the Author

Shawna Yang Ryan was born and raised in California. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.

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olivel

Posted February 10, 2011

Unforgettable!!!

How I loved this novel!!!!I am reading this again, which is something I seldom do.I can so envision this as a MOVIE with a sensitive director.There are not enough books written about early chinese immigrant life in the Sacramento ,Ca, Delta region through the chinese perspective.I would hope this novel might encourage readers to help promote preservation of some of the historical buildings still standing in these areas before they are lost.Thankyou again Shawna,for your beautiful book.I am so looking forward to your next!!!!

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Melissa_W

Posted May 15, 2009

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Ethereal and unique

Shawna Yang Ryan's debut novel is a beautiful, heartbreaking look at a forgotten segment of American history. Every one of Ryan's characters - Corlissa, Sophia, Richard, Howar, Chloe, Poppy, Ming Wai - has been lovingly rendered to the point that the prose of the novel becomes tactile, almost real. You can taste the salt Ming Wai leaves behind, feel the heaviness of the air as Corlissa works; a major sensory focus of the writing is smell and scent. The book covers a space of only a few months in 1928 but the narrative loops back and forth, like interconnected short stories, and changes narrators when convenient so that all the stories are eventually brought to the reader's attention. Intertwined with the story of the boat women are tales from Chinese folklore and mythology and this contributes to the "ghost story" feel of the novel. There is also an ethereal quality to the work but instead of floating in air it's like floating under water, like the rippling of silk; the characters struggle to float free of their pasts, to avoid sinking under the town of Locke, California. While the political climate and laws of immigration in 1928 are not directly a focus of the narrative, ideas regarding sexuality, morality, racism, and culture lie beneath the characters' stories; the whitegirl brothel, the lack of ethnic Chinese women among the immigrant community (only merchants could obtain a visa to bring a wife to the US from China), the mix of Christian ideology with Chinese tradition, and the notion of honor all come to play in the novel. I particularly enjoyed Ryan's debut novel (originally published as Locke 1928 by El Leon) and I hope her next published work isn't very far in the future.

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