Zhang’s beautiful, limpid prose penetrates surfaces to illuminate the shadows or currents beneath without self-consciousness, the mark of excellent literary fiction…Brilliant. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This is a novel of important lessons and voices though, the tone of it for me felt it could have leaned into its own darkness more instead of seeming uncertain which tone to take.

The protagonist has the same name as a tragic mythical heroine, and their “relationship” definitely adds to the story. The characters are fully developed, the world building complete, the recurring themes consistent and important. The novel reads with the spirit of an epic, spanning continents and years in Daiyu’s life as they are thrust into perilous situation after perilous situation from being kidnapped and sold into sex work to disguising themself as a man to navigate the violent white man’s world of 19th century Idaho.The novel does seem to avoid any relationship towards trans identities, in case you were looking for that, or any queer aspects as well. But when she is kidnapped and forced across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. The aspects of racial violence will have your stomach in knots, Zhang truly delivers a sense of dread and discomfort as she examines how even with best attempts at assimilation, whiteness will play gatekeeper to the point of violence at every opportunity. I don’t know why I still get shocked by the lack of humanity humans show over the past, the present, No doubt the future. Discrimination still exists- louder in some countries/cities/towns than others but it unfortunately still rears its ugly face.

At the age of thirteen, she is kidnapped and trafficked to San Francisco (smuggled across the ocean in a barrel of coal) and sold to a brothel.Even injustice cannot extinguish Daiyu’s spirit, which is what makes Four Treasures of the Sky a rich reading experience. The writing is persuasive and lyrical and Daiyu's account of learning English is exquisite, but the narrative does sometimes threaten to overwhelm the reader's ability to suspend disbelief. Daiyu always resented being named after a tragic heroine of Chinese literature (Lin Daiyu from Cao Xueqin's classic 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber), fearing that it would be ominous.

Four Treasures of the Sky isn’t easy to read but it’s easy to comprehend as one meant to be difficult. When I am kidnapped, I am thirteen and standing in the middle of the Zhifu fish market on Beach Road, watching a fleshy woman assemble white fish the shape of spades into a pile. But despite that the writing is so very young adult that I could really immerse myself in the story and truly enjoy it. Extraordinary…Those who want to learn about a little-known incident in Chinese-American history will be enlightened by this moving debut.

To guide her along the way, Daiyu is often visited by the spirit of her namesake, Lin Daiyu( 林黛玉), who comes from Dream of the Red Chamber, an 18th century manuscript by Cao Xueqin considered one of the four Classic Chinese novels. I liked the trick of using Chinese folklore to bind the two experiences together and also(despite being a bit stereotypical) that Daiyu fulfils the faiths of her namesake. The resonance and immediacy of these barbarous 19th-century events are testament to Zhang’s storytelling powers, and should stand as a warning to all of us.