Genre Fiction
![Jamie Ford - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001KP5KY0.jpg)
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick
The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with a powerful exploration of the love that binds a family across the generations in "one of the most beautiful books of motherhood and what we pass on to those that come after us" (Jenna Bush Hager, Today).
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living.
As Washington's former poet laureate, that's how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.
As the painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn't the only thing she's inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period-a stranger who's loved her through all of her genetic memories. Can Dorothy break the cycle of pain and abandonment to finally find peace for her daughter and love for herself? Or will she end up paying the ultimate price?
"For Jamie Ford fans both old and new, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an unmitigated pleasure" (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and a lyrical love story unlike any other.
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick
The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with a powerful exploration of the love that binds a family across the generations in "one of the most beautiful books of motherhood and what we pass on to those that come after us" (Jenna Bush Hager, Today).
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living.
As Washington's former poet laureate, that's how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.
As the painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn't the only thing she's inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period-a stranger who's loved her through all of her genetic memories. Can Dorothy break the cycle of pain and abandonment to finally find peace for her daughter and love for herself? Or will she end up paying the ultimate price?
"For Jamie Ford fans both old and new, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an unmitigated pleasure" (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and a lyrical love story unlike any other.
Editorial Reviews
"The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with a powerful exploration of the love that binds a family across the generations in "one of the most beautiful books of motherhood and what we pass on to those that come after us" -JENNA BUSH HAGER, Today.
"The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is simply transcendent. The first Chinese woman to set her lotus-bound feet in America is destined to set off a ripple through time and space, as her descendants struggle with her legacy of loss and loneliness. Themes of karma, courage, love, and motherhood weave timelessly through eight generations of women seeking to find balance in an increasingly tempest-racked world. Jamie Ford has outdone himself!" -KATE QUINN, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
"Jamie Ford's army of readers will be thrilled by this amazing new novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, which promises to take them to places they have not been to before. At our house, we enjoyed many nights reading later and later into the evening, and discussing its wonders and surprises." -LUIS ALBERTO URREA, bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
"Fans of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet rejoice: Jamie Ford has done it again. The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is a searing and vibrant epic of generational love, trauma, and healing. In his trademark poignant prose, Ford breathes Afong Moy and her descendants to life with dimension and power. This is a book that will stay with readers and reshape how they engage with their own lives and legacies. To read it is to be transformed--and to transcend." -QIAN JULIE WANG, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country
"[A] poignant meditation on how we are shaped by those who come before us, as well as an emotional journey through the past and future. Jamie Ford's lyrical writing fills the reader with wonder, possibility, and most of all hope. This story will live inside me forever." -JANET SKESLIEN CHARLES, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library
"A haunting love story not just for our time but all times, Jamie Ford's The Many Daughters of Afong Moy explores the challenges of the Asian experience across eras, and into our own, and reminds us that no human suffers alone. Impossible to put down once I picked it up, its characters will live with me for a very long time."
"The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is simply transcendent. The first Chinese woman to set her lotus-bound feet in America is destined to set off a ripple through time and space, as her descendants struggle with her legacy of loss and loneliness. Themes of karma, courage, love, and motherhood weave timelessly through eight generations of women seeking to find balance in an increasingly tempest-racked world. Jamie Ford has outdone himself!" -KATE QUINN, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
"Jamie Ford's army of readers will be thrilled by this amazing new novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, which promises to take them to places they have not been to before. At our house, we enjoyed many nights reading later and later into the evening, and discussing its wonders and surprises." -LUIS ALBERTO URREA, bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
"Fans of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet rejoice: Jamie Ford has done it again. The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is a searing and vibrant epic of generational love, trauma, and healing. In his trademark poignant prose, Ford breathes Afong Moy and her descendants to life with dimension and power. This is a book that will stay with readers and reshape how they engage with their own lives and legacies. To read it is to be transformed--and to transcend." -QIAN JULIE WANG, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country
"[A] poignant meditation on how we are shaped by those who come before us, as well as an emotional journey through the past and future. Jamie Ford's lyrical writing fills the reader with wonder, possibility, and most of all hope. This story will live inside me forever." -JANET SKESLIEN CHARLES, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library
"A haunting love story not just for our time but all times, Jamie Ford's The Many Daughters of Afong Moy explores the challenges of the Asian experience across eras, and into our own, and reminds us that no human suffers alone. Impossible to put down once I picked it up, its characters will live with me for a very long time."
Readers Top Reviews
LMS
This will stay with me for day, and I will read it again and again and again.Absolutely beautiful and so very real. I come out of this like I come out of the best dreams, the kind that I want to go on and on…
Organic C.LMS
Review of The Many Daughter of Afong Moy Boy did I love this one. So relevant. So poignant. What if the lives of our ancestors lived inside of our bodies? What if the pain they felt, we also carry? What could change if we heal these deep wounds and become more aware of them? What a concept. This story follows many different women in this family line and I loved how they interweaved their own small and big happenings into the fabric of their ancestral lineage. The most recent woman follows a new study and therapy that can heal the wounds of her past relatives to help heal her own depression. I really couldn’t put the book down. Disclaimer: it’s SAD. Most of the characters have harsh realities and a lot of loss and hurting. I found the beautiful language and anguish of each story made me feel so vulnerable myself, as I read each vignette. Like rain tapping my insides. The perfect medicine for me in a time where I have felt adrift without my mother. This book isn’t for a time when you are joyful in your life experience, pick it up in a time where your soul feels cloudy, grey, and stormy… Especially if you can’t pinpoint why. This book will come to your aide and give you some water to quench your heartache. I resonated so much with the writing and extra kudos goes to the author for being brave enough to write so many women characters when he, himself, is male. I can appreciate an author who can embody something they don’t live themselves. 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 I couldn’t give it a perfect score because the ending left me unresolved…maybe that was the point…but I was left with a need unmet. I don’t say it often, but the story could have used a few chapters more. It doesn’t in anyway detract from how much I loved the book though. I highly recommend it!
Alice K.Organic C
This was the first book I've read by Jamie Ford and I love his writing style. It's at once easy to read and beautifully written. The writing of The Many Daughters of Afong Moy was a complicated endeavor and I'm not sure how the author decided on the order because it's not chronological. He wrote about seven generations of Chinese women, spanning three centuries and managed to give them all distinct personalities and trauma, while maintaining historical accuracy (I think, but I'm not an expert in that area). The premise if the book is that trauma (and possibly love) can be passed down from generation to generation (epigenetics). Jamie Ford managed to create characters that I cared about and empathized with, without scarring me with their trauma. I was left with questions about each character, wanting to know more about what happened to them after their individual traumatic events. Each character was interesting and defined enough that they could have had their own book, however, and the author did a wonderful job of keeping to the point. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys historical, speculative, and/or cultural fiction, and also those who like to learn about new medical discoveries and theories like epigenetics. The author called this book, "An epigenetic love story." Note: This book contains some possible triggering events regarding sexism, racism, bigotry, rape, and mental health issues, but does not contain graphic descriptions of violence. As I mentioned above, I found I was able to empathize with the characters' plights and feel outrage on their behalf without being drawn too deeply into their trauma. Quite a testament to Mr. Ford's literary skill if you ask me.
ConsumerAlice K.O
A wonderfully strange novel. As a psychotherapist working from the premise that we internalize our family of origin - their habits, their disposition, the repetition of lives relived by progeny - this was an interesting take on the same theory but from an angle of inherited trauma superimposed on both historical and future selves handed down and handed up from each version of the so-called self, mixed in with some Buddhist philosophy that gives the content context. Original, creative and, at times a bit challenging to follow but worth the effort. I cannot remember the last time I read a book that so easily immerses the reader in different periods and generates visceral images on the mind’s inner eye. If you’ve ever felt a sense of deja vu this might interest you. The idea that when we meet people and are immediately drawn to them (or repulsed) is one I return to again and again. The underlying premise is we recreate our own past in the present and choose, albeit unconsciously, the people that will help us promulgate the original blueprint that starts being created by the environment almost the minute we are born. We recreate the trauma of our family of origin — and every family, every person you meet has trauma. From where I sit, our social world, our society, is a giant hall of funhouse mirrors with all its distortions. I help people recognize the patterns, the cognitive distortions if you will, inherited through the environment of their family - and, hopefully jettison their trauma in the process. The theory in this novel is not necessarily in opposition to the theories I work from but provides an an alternate or adjunct explanation - currently in vogue - about trans-generational trauma. There are several spots where the book seems a bit heavy handed and almost contradictory in its post-modern feminism. To paraphrase “She knew pain… she was born a woman.” This feels redundant as the whole book is about the pain of women. As if the author had to spell this out for readers who somehow missed that piece in the not-so subtle subtext. The journey of the protagonist(s) is framed in the search for love and is in some ways - turned on its head or not - is a take on the Cinderella tales that have been told for as long as we’ve had gender roles. Yes, the protagonist rescues herself but not without the help of various incarnations of her knight in shining armor. It is interesting how the persistent tale of the damsel in distress is - from the savior climbing the tower on braids of her hair to rescue said damsel right through to the last forgettable rom-com you watched - remains embedded in our culture and in a brilliant novel otherwise unfettered by convention. Maybe this incorporation of females being rescued but in the end rescuing themselves was the authors intent? Like any work of art the intention is open to interpretat...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1: Faye 1 Faye
(1942)
Faye Moy signed a contract stating that she would never marry. That's what the American Volunteer Group had required of all female recruits. Though as she sat in the bar of the Kunming Tennis Club, Faye thought that perhaps there should have been an exception made for older nurses. Not that she had any immediate prospects among the thirty young officers who made up the Flying Tigers. It was just that a notarized statement of marital exclusion seemed to hammer home the fact that she'd never been in love. She'd come close once, back in her village near Canton, amid the wilted lilies of her youth. Since then she'd felt many things for many people, but always more yearning than devotion, more appreciation than passion. There had even been an awkwardly arranged marriage proposal a lifetime ago, at the Tou Tou Koi restaurant, where a dashing young man got down on one knee, with a ring, and too much pomade in his hair.
Wasted. That's what her father said when she turned him down. "Fei-jin? Why do you have to be this way? No one likes a stubborn girl."
She'd tried not to roll her eyes. "Why can't you call me Faye like everyone else?"
"Because I'm not everyone else. Look at you. You're not getting any younger. You should be happy someone still wants you at your age."
She'd been twenty-seven.
But as much as Faye had wanted to share her life with someone, to watch a sunset in the arms of somebody who wouldn't leave before sunrise, even then she knew that want was not the same as need. She'd refused to settle for convenience, or to abet her aching loneliness. She went to Lingnan University instead. She told herself that if she stopped looking, eventually the right person would come along.
That was decades ago.
Now she felt like the jigsaw puzzle of her life had long been completed, the picture looked whole, but there was one piece missing.
That's my heart, Faye thought, something extra, unnecessary.
Now well into her fifties, Faye still couldn't forget how in nursing school, Chinese mothers used to point at her as she walked down the street in the evening. They'd turn to their daughters and say, "Don't be disobedient or you'll end up like her," or "That's what happens when you're too proud-too foolish. No one wants you." Faye would pretend she didn't hear. Then she'd run home and curl up in bed, crying herself to sleep. In the morning, she'd light a Chesterfield and stare at the tobacco-stained ceiling, aching inside, as tendrils of smoke drifted upward like unanswered prayers.
To her parents and those mothers on the street, Faye was mei fan neoi zi. Though she didn't feel like an old maid. Even after she arrived in Kunming, where she was twice the age of the American nurses who followed. On the bustling streets of Kunming, Faye was treated differently. Perhaps because she'd served longer and now hardly noticed the suffocating humidity of typhoon season. Or because she didn't scream when field rats crawled their way into her dresser and chewed the buttons off her clothing. Conceivably it was because she was fluent in English thanks to Lai King, her American-born mother, and could quote poetry by Li Bai as well as Gertrude Stein and Oscar Wilde, yet also spend an entire afternoon playing canasta and whist while drinking tiger balms and not let the rum cocktails make her sick for days. Faye learned early on to avoid not only the whiskey the natives made, but especially the gin concocted by Jesuit missionaries.
"You want another?" Faye shook her glass tumbler.
Lois, the latest nursing recruit, a comely blonde from Topeka, looked back, bleary eyed. "Am I supposed to say yes? What is this, some kind of initiation?"
Faye noticed that Lois was slurring her words, so she peered over the recruit's shoulder and made eye contact with the bartender. Faye shook her head, almost imperceptibly so Lois wouldn't catch on, then nodded as the barkeep put his bottle away.
"I don't know why everyone around here drinks so much," Lois said, waving broadly at everyone in the club. "And why do they have to play such sad music?"
Faye listened to the jukebox as Frank Sinatra sang "I'll Never Smile Again." She thought about the flashes of light on the horizon each night, the peals of thunder. Followed by the rumble of pony carts on cobbled streets in the morning and the wailing of widows as refugees flooded through the city's arched gates.
"It comes with the territory," Faye said as she worried about her parents, whom she hadn't heard from in two years.
S...
(1942)
Faye Moy signed a contract stating that she would never marry. That's what the American Volunteer Group had required of all female recruits. Though as she sat in the bar of the Kunming Tennis Club, Faye thought that perhaps there should have been an exception made for older nurses. Not that she had any immediate prospects among the thirty young officers who made up the Flying Tigers. It was just that a notarized statement of marital exclusion seemed to hammer home the fact that she'd never been in love. She'd come close once, back in her village near Canton, amid the wilted lilies of her youth. Since then she'd felt many things for many people, but always more yearning than devotion, more appreciation than passion. There had even been an awkwardly arranged marriage proposal a lifetime ago, at the Tou Tou Koi restaurant, where a dashing young man got down on one knee, with a ring, and too much pomade in his hair.
Wasted. That's what her father said when she turned him down. "Fei-jin? Why do you have to be this way? No one likes a stubborn girl."
She'd tried not to roll her eyes. "Why can't you call me Faye like everyone else?"
"Because I'm not everyone else. Look at you. You're not getting any younger. You should be happy someone still wants you at your age."
She'd been twenty-seven.
But as much as Faye had wanted to share her life with someone, to watch a sunset in the arms of somebody who wouldn't leave before sunrise, even then she knew that want was not the same as need. She'd refused to settle for convenience, or to abet her aching loneliness. She went to Lingnan University instead. She told herself that if she stopped looking, eventually the right person would come along.
That was decades ago.
Now she felt like the jigsaw puzzle of her life had long been completed, the picture looked whole, but there was one piece missing.
That's my heart, Faye thought, something extra, unnecessary.
Now well into her fifties, Faye still couldn't forget how in nursing school, Chinese mothers used to point at her as she walked down the street in the evening. They'd turn to their daughters and say, "Don't be disobedient or you'll end up like her," or "That's what happens when you're too proud-too foolish. No one wants you." Faye would pretend she didn't hear. Then she'd run home and curl up in bed, crying herself to sleep. In the morning, she'd light a Chesterfield and stare at the tobacco-stained ceiling, aching inside, as tendrils of smoke drifted upward like unanswered prayers.
To her parents and those mothers on the street, Faye was mei fan neoi zi. Though she didn't feel like an old maid. Even after she arrived in Kunming, where she was twice the age of the American nurses who followed. On the bustling streets of Kunming, Faye was treated differently. Perhaps because she'd served longer and now hardly noticed the suffocating humidity of typhoon season. Or because she didn't scream when field rats crawled their way into her dresser and chewed the buttons off her clothing. Conceivably it was because she was fluent in English thanks to Lai King, her American-born mother, and could quote poetry by Li Bai as well as Gertrude Stein and Oscar Wilde, yet also spend an entire afternoon playing canasta and whist while drinking tiger balms and not let the rum cocktails make her sick for days. Faye learned early on to avoid not only the whiskey the natives made, but especially the gin concocted by Jesuit missionaries.
"You want another?" Faye shook her glass tumbler.
Lois, the latest nursing recruit, a comely blonde from Topeka, looked back, bleary eyed. "Am I supposed to say yes? What is this, some kind of initiation?"
Faye noticed that Lois was slurring her words, so she peered over the recruit's shoulder and made eye contact with the bartender. Faye shook her head, almost imperceptibly so Lois wouldn't catch on, then nodded as the barkeep put his bottle away.
"I don't know why everyone around here drinks so much," Lois said, waving broadly at everyone in the club. "And why do they have to play such sad music?"
Faye listened to the jukebox as Frank Sinatra sang "I'll Never Smile Again." She thought about the flashes of light on the horizon each night, the peals of thunder. Followed by the rumble of pony carts on cobbled streets in the morning and the wailing of widows as refugees flooded through the city's arched gates.
"It comes with the territory," Faye said as she worried about her parents, whom she hadn't heard from in two years.
S...
