Fae Myenne Ng was a child raised by a seafaring father and a seamstress mother, by San Francisco's Chinatown and its legendary Orphan Bachelors -- men without wives or children, the living legacy of the Exclusion Act. Orphan Bachelors weaves together the history of her family, lucky to exist and nevertheless doomed; it offers an elegy for brothers estranged and for elders lost, and insights into writing between languages and teaching between generations.
A powerful, deeply expressive memoir ... "Orphan Bachelors"... isn’t always cohesive. Inspirations for classroom lectures sit alongside deep-seated thoughts about her relationship with her mother, for example. But if that’s the way Ng’s brain works, so be it. With her fiery prose and deeply informed, nuanced perspective on one of the most caustic, exclusionist eras in history, I’d follow her anywhere.
Ng presents a luminous memoir, finding transformative, aching authenticity in revealing difficult lives ... Her exceptional storytelling elucidates and illuminates.
