The Red Car to Hollywood

In 1924 Chinatown, Los Angeles, 16-year-old second-generation Chinese American Ruby Chan’s dreams of running the family store with her father are dashed after her parents discover that she has been secretly dating the son of a prominent white family. Ruby’s father believes that the only way to uphold their reputation and keep business flocking to the store following the scandal is to prepare Ruby for an arranged marriage. When she befriends 19-year-old up-and-coming actor Anna May Wong, Anna’s influence prompts Ruby to question her father’s beliefs; later, Ruby gets a job at a department store and starts dating a Chinese American boy despite her family’s plans. Liu (Girls on the Line) layers instances of overt racism and covert microaggressions to showcase Ruby’s experience navigating Chinese and American cultures while highlighting the exclusionary government policies affecting Chinese immigrants of the period. Centering female perspectives—such as Ruby’s ruminations on her mother’s own marriage, her witnessing Anna’s attempts to break Hollywood glass ceilings, and her recovering from sexual assault at the hands of a powerful individual—serves to showcase myriad additional challenges posed against Chinese American women in a narrative that expertly captures a complex historical moment. Ages 14–up. Agent: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Mar.)