The Valley of Amazement KINDLE MOBI by Amy Tan

Amy Tan's protagonist in The Valley of Amazement is biracial Anglo-American and Chinese. Tan has always handled the bicultural narrative brilliantly, but the biracial narrative is far more complex and certainly more broadly significant to the current readership. She handles the subject with great insight and also courageously, because this novel, after all, takes place mostly during the the early 1900s, when biracial children were regarded with deep aversion both in China and in America.

Amy Tan is an amazing storyteller, andThe Valley of Amazement exemplifies her skills. This is a multi generational story between mothers and daughters, as well as a story of growing up and of being caught between two different cultures.
“When I was seven,” she begins, “I knew exactly who I was: a thoroughly American girl in race, manners, and speech, whose mother, Lulu Minturn, was the only white woman who owned a first-class courtesan house in Shanghai.”

As it turns out, Violet knows almost nothing about who she is — or who her mother is — but she’s awfully well-informed about what goes on in a courtesan house. Lulu Minturn may earn a nice surplus by facilitating business deals between American and Chinese clients, but she generates the bulk of her income by managing sex workers who come to her as young as 13. Amy Tam did an incredible amount of research to detail the life and operations of courtesans at the beginning of 20th century China, as well as about the foreign settlement and politics. I must warn you though....if you don't like long stories, don't bother to d/l...it's a big read to get to the end but worth it :)