Four Treasures of the Sky: The compelling debut about identity and belonging in the 1880s American West

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Incredibly good writing which kept me so interested, I barely slept for the 2-3 days it took me to finish it.

A resilient brush is one that, after depositing ink on paper, can spring back up in preparation for the next stroke. The artist must master the art of releasing the brush, giving it the space and freedom to find itself again. Discrimination still exists- louder in some countries/cities/towns than others but it unfortunately still rears its ugly face. Her troubles begin with her name; Daiyu’s eponym is Lin Daiyu, a tragic figure of legend who dies spitting blood after the family of her beloved tricks him into marrying someone else.Brings alive a heroine for the ages , an indomitable teenage girl whose relentless spirit and self-reinvention carries this story. The book is realistic and gritty, following Lin Daiyu through being trafficked to the United States, forced to work in a brothel, and her subsequent escape and struggle to survive, to try to make it back to China. She realises the injustices are different on this other side of the world but aren’t any less brutal. With unforgettable characters, resiliency, and poetic lyricism, Jenny Tinghui Zhang takes her readers on an unforgettable adventure. forced to do hard labor work, forced to learn English, forced into sexual coercion > all these really awful things….

Through each transformation and each moment of pure destruction upon her life, Daiyu continues to resurrect like a phoenix, becoming a figure larger than life and walk amongst the myths and legends of the West. Shipped to America to be sold to a brothel, Daiyu’s destiny is once again indisputable and devastating. It is a bit unfortunate that the novel itself occasionally does not live up to it’s own instructions. The inkstone asks for destruction before creation,’ Daiyu tells us, ‘ You must first destroy yourself, grind yourself into a paste, before becoming a work of art. Her personal struggles are shadowed by sexual violence and the ongoing threat of sexual assault for much of the book, as well as the specter of the Chinese exclusion act and increasing anti-Chinese sentiment and violence.Heavy themes are being brought to light in Four Treasures of the Sky: kidnapping, abuse, xenophobia, sexual abuse etc .

This book is haunting, luscious, and precise—it’s historical fiction as we most want and need it to be. A revelation and a haunting, Four Treasures of the Sky is an instant and necessary classic, easily among the best novels of this decade. In a sweeping adventure that spans China and the American West, Jenny Tinghui Zhang has crafted a thoughtful story of identity, love, and belonging. When I am kidnapped, I am thirteen and standing in the middle of the Zhifu fish market on Beach Road, watching a fleshy woman assemble whitefish the shape of spades into a pile.Extraordinary…Those who want to learn about a little-known incident in Chinese-American history will be enlightened by this moving debut. My reason for picking it up was to learn more about the Chinese Exclusion Act, but what kept me reading was this layered story that tugged at my heart start to finish! The magical realism interspersed within the story is often something that I am not a huge fan of but felt like it worked here completely. Daiyu is sure to take her place in the canon of great Western heroines next to True Grit's Mattie Ross. But this is just the beginning of a journey that sends her across an ocean to San Francisco and the lawless American west.