A powerful, deeply expressive memoir.

Might be likened to a figurative oil work, with structured lines building layers of her family’s history..

Ng’s Orphan Bachelors, an aching account of the author’s family in San Francisco’s Chinatown at the tail end of the Chinese Exclusion era, is an exemplar of the historical memoir.

Ng presents a luminous memoir, finding transformative, aching authenticity in revealing difficult lives.

Luminous.

A luminous West Coast bookend to Ava Chin’s Mott Street, Ng’s book is not just a family portrait, but also a powerful remembrance of the “orphan bachelors” of San Francisco, single men who arrived from China and, segregated by race and class, never found spouses and grew old in one another’s company, never quite at home in a strange land. An exemplary study of the past brought into the present, spanning years and continents..

The author’s straightforward prose and the work’s staggering scope bring home the myriad ways misguided policies damaged generations of immigrant families. Readers will be rapt..