Forbidden City by Vanessa Hua [in Booklist]
In her first historical novel, Vanessa Hua (A River of Stars, 2018) draws on 20-plus years of experience as a journalist covering Asia and the diaspora to reclaim a few of the “millions of impoverished women who have shaped China in their own ways yet remain absent from the country’s official narrative.”
In 1965, Mei Xiang, 15, is chosen for a prominent dance troupe. As the youngest daughter in a village family, she’s learned to silently observe others, a skill that, ironically, gets her noticed. When Mei travels to Beijing to “serve the Party,” she lands in the deified chairman’s bed the very first night. “Peasant” she may be, but Mei holds the pedophilic septuagenarian’s attention longer than most. She’s coached to challenge the subversive president, who is clearly attempting to usurp the chairman’s power with capitalist threats; her success could influence the country’s future.
Addressing an unknown “you” as San Francisco’s Chinatown cheers the chairman’s 1976 death, Mei reveals “a reckoning that’s long overdue.” Hua’s 15-year journey of research and writing deftly proves that “fiction flourishes where the official record ends.”
YA/General Interest: Today’s #MeToo-aware generation should connect with great empathy to this patriarchy-controlled teen.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, March 15, 2022
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2022
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