Paper Shadows: A Memoir of a Past Lost and Found

From the author of the popular and widely acclaimed novel, The Jade Peony, comes this new autobiographical exploration of past and present, culture and selfhood, history and memory, immigration and family life--in other words, the modern-day collision of Eastern and Western experiences and worldviews.Three weeks before his 57th birthday, Choy discovered that he had been adopted. This astonishing revelation inspires the beautifully-wrought, sensitively told Paper Shadows, the story of a Chinatown past both lost and found. From his early life amid the ghosts of old Chinatown, to his discovery, years later, of deeply held family secrets that crossed the ocean from mainland China to Gold Mountain, this engrossing, multi-layered self-portrait is "a childhood memoir of crystalline clarity" (The Boston Globe) that will speak directly and arrestingly to all students of Chinese immigrant history.