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China Dolls
by Lisa See
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San Francisco, 1938. Grace Lee arrives from the Midwest after fleeing an abusive father and hopes to become a professional dancer. In Chinatown she meets Helen Fong, whose respectable family conceals private grief, and Ruby Tom, a Japanese American performer who presents herself as Chinese as hostility towards Japan increases. The three women enter the Chinese nightclub circuit, where visibility offers work but requires them to perform identities designed for white audiences.
Their careers develop through the Golden Gate International Exposition and the Forbidden City nightclub as the Depression gives way to war. After Pearl Harbor, the incarceration of Japanese Americans places Ruby in immediate danger, while ambition, romantic competition and long-held secrets divide the friends. The novel follows them to 1948, tracing the price of success for Asian American women whose public images depend on concealing parts of themselves.
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