Book Review for 8.13.24: Chinawoman's Chance

Title: Chinawoman's Chance

Author: James Musgrave

Date: 2018

Publisher: E,M,R.E.

ISBN: 9781943457311

Quote: "May those who see us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if H don't turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping."

That quote was too good not to share. Unfortunately, this book is not a feel-good read.  Not only does it feature a series of gory murders, it also deals with Victorian San Francisco, a time and place whose racism appalled people (like Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce) who'd grown up with slavery. In Thomas Sowell's history of how people have treated other people like trash and owed them money, around the world and throughout history, San Francisco's exploitation of Irish and Chinese immigrants--and setting them against each other--still stands out.

The story uses real people as characters in ways that are admittedly contrary to fact. There was a real Clara Foltz, one of the first female attorneys to practice law in California. There was a real Ah Toy, one of the first Chinese women to get into San Francisco, a courtesan who claimed in her own defense that she trained "her girls" to be entertainers, not prostitutes. In real history they never worked together, Clara Foltz never showed any interest in Chinese immigrants, and there's no evidence that the two proto-feminists ever spoke to each other. But if you read about the plight of the Chinese immigrants and thought "Somebody ought to have stood up for some of them in court," you might think, "Wouldn't it have been cool if Clara Foltz and Ah Toy had joined forces to defend an innocent Chinese-American?"

In real life, nobody defended them. They had no rights. They were not technically slaves  in the American system (in the Chinese system several of the women were), but neither the men nor the women were considered citizens or prospective citizens either. They developed their own tong system for law enforcement, because in the White courts, if a Chinese immigrant was murdered, well, that was one less competitor against Irish immigrants or even Anglo- or German-Americans, many of whom became desperate for work when they failed to strike gold in California. Most of the Chinese men were obligated, and most of the women sold outright, to come to America; they hadn't chosen to be in San Francisco yet they found themselves actively hated for being there. "A Chinaman's chance" meant the smallest imaginable chance, just barely more than no chance at all. The White capitalists who brought in Chinese laborers did not want them to succeed or prosper; they wanted them to work cheap and then go home empty-handed.

So here is a series of seven bloody murders, solved by the two proto-feminists as a team, culminating with a shoot-out reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. For those who want a dystopian story that'll make them cry, this might be a good choice. It's grim and gritty, with a daffy urban missionary and a crooked politician among the prime suspects. A Chinese man is blamed for the first murder of an Irish girl, because he was seen talking to her and the Irish community frowned on that. What the Irish community weren't told, and didn't care to find out, is that the same murderer had previously killed six Chinese women, and no White person cared. Foltz guesses who really "done it" but she'll have to handle literal dynamite to get the proof.

Historically, it's full of anachronisms, mostly in the way people talk. Victorian Americans did pride themselves on avoiding "ugly words" and saying things like "the excrement rolls downhill," but they didn't have the word "racism," either. (They had "racialism." They thought it meant a good thing, a healthy pride in one's ancestors and their culture.) They did have words for the racism in San Francisco at this time. Without looking it up I've always been under the impression that this was the origin of the cliche "disgrace to the human race." Musgrave subjects us to relatively little of the hatespews, religious bigotry, and misogyny that fill real historical documents of this period, althoug probably enough to curl the modern reader's nose...but then he has Foltz fulminating about "patriarchy" where the original Suffragists said "oppression and slavery." 

Though many people in Victorian San Francisco claimed to be Christians, Musgrave shows us no example of a real, radical Christian--though the need for urban mission work was desperate. I'm sad to say that the reason why I saw so little of San Francisco, during my parents' nomadic years, was that my parents always said they never met any noticeable sincere Christians there, either. So, whether Musgrave is indulging in anti-Christian bias or documenting historical fact is hard to say. The city really was notorious for every kind of vice, crime, and corruption, not for anyone sincerely trying to be a good influence. Probably there were urban missionaries out there and, as with the flaky one in this novel, their good intentions were not accompanied by any great success.