The Laundryman’s Boy
A Novel
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Fall 1913, St. Catharines, Ontario. Thirteen-year-old Hoi Wing Woo, the son of a scholar, is forced to give up his dreams of an education when he is sent to work in a Chinese laundry in Canada.
Hoi Wing is immediately thrust into relentless, mind-numbing toil, washing clothes by hand for sixteen hours a day, six days a week. Isolated and friendless, he falls into despair.
When he meets Heather, an Irish scullery maid who shares his love of books, Hoi Wing’s life immediately brightens. Together, they escape the drudgery of their work by reading novels in a secret hideout. As their friendship grows, they defy the restrictions of their servitude and embark on a plan to better their lives.
But Hoi Wing’s dreams will not go unchallenged. Jonathan Braddock, a wealthy and influential entrepreneur who heads the Asiatic Exclusion League, has decided to run for mayor. If Braddock is elected, Hoi Wing will be sent back to China.
The Laundryman’s Boy is a moving coming-of-age story that bravely examines notions of race, duty and friendship in early Canada.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When 13-year-old Hoi Wing is pulled out of school in Guangdong province in 1913 and sent to work at a Chinese laundry in faraway St. Catharines, Ontario, he discovers that the Gold Mountain (the Chinese term for the prosperous North American continent) is not a friendly place. He’s met with horrifyingly racist threats, physical violence, and back-breaking work at the laundry, run by the stern, one-armed Elder Uncle and the quiet, compassionate Second Uncle. Yet the intelligent and tenacious young man discovers that life in this strange land can have meaning when he meets a librarian and her Chinese-speaking aunt, who offer him a chance to learn English. Filled with terrifying teenage bullies and xenophobic adults driving motorized vehicles—but softened by the protagonist’s newfound friendship with a sweet yet undeniably fierce young scullery maid—Edward Y. C. Lee’s intricate coming-of-age tale is a heart-rending and heartfelt journey into the life of a boy trying to find his place in a new world.
