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After being let go from her job in a hat shop, Jo Kuan must return to working on the estate of a wealthy family, being the lady’s maid of the spoiled daughter; her elderly guardian has worked there for decades as a groom in the stables. The only home she’s ever known is the hidden basement of a house (used previously as part of the Underground Railroad) where a family runs a newspaper; she and Old Gin have to live quietly and simply there so they won’t be discovered.
Being Chinese in Atlanta just 25 years after the Civil War limits Jo’s options for just about everything in life, but she has dreams. When she overhears that the Bell family’s newspaper is in trouble and needs more subscriptions, she decides to try to help; she starts an advice column for women under the pseudonym “Miss Sweetie” and secretly drops off installments upstairs. Jo is pleased when the column becomes a huge hit among readers, and she realizes that it can be a way for her to address some of the societal problems she observes and deals with herself, such as people of color being made to sit at the back of streetcars.
Jo is making her life work and enjoying her opportunity to write when she discovers a mysterious letter tucked inside a suit in her basement home. It sets her off on a quest to find out finally who her parents were; Old Gin just said he found her and took her in. But it seems he actually knows more than he’s let on. When he won’t budge on providing information, Jo resorts to consulting a criminal who is notorious for “trading in information,” hoping that she can use her smarts to stay safe while achieving her goal.
The Downstairs Girl is a story about a young woman finding herself, coming to terms with the cards she’s been dealt, and making the most of them. It’s a fascinating look into a part of Southern history I hadn’t known about — and the author hadn’t either, as she writes in an author’s note — that when slaves were freed, planters shipped in Chinese people to work the fields. She says the plantation owners “were dismayed, however, when the Chinese behaved no differently from formerly enslaved blacks. The new workers were unwilling to withstand the terrible conditions and ran away to the cities, and sometimes vanished from the South altogether.” When a federal law prohibited more immigration of Chinese workers, those living here already couldn’t bring their families to the U.S., leaving them isolated and “living in the margins of a country that only saw in black and white.”
I was easily caught up in this poignant story as Jo found her voice and ways to express it. She is a strong character with intelligence, cleverness and a sly wit that finds its way out primarily through writing. Definitely a great clean young adult book I can recommend.
Rated: Mild. There are a few instances of mild language. Sexual content includes a kiss, references to an affair, a character having secret liaisons, a naked man (with a brief description of his private parts looking like innocuous items), and two visits to a brothel where a bad guy does business. Violence includes one instance of an old man being beaten up badly.
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