Ling begins working at Uncle Ng's laundry in Sacramento and meets Little Sister, a sex worker employed there.

Ling meets railroad magnate Charles Crocker on his delivery route and is offered a job as Crocker's personal valet.

Ling's queue is cut in a racist street fight, and Crocker celebrates by buying Ling an expensive new western suit.

Ling quits working for Crocker and takes a lower-paying position working alongside the Chinese railroad crew.

After the railroad's completion, Ling works as a bone collector, gathering Chinese laborers' remains to send back to China.

Ling runs into Little Sister in San Francisco, where she has become a madam who employs her own daughters as sex workers.

Anna May Wong sneaks into a movie theater as a girl and becomes captivated by the admiration audiences show toward film stars.

Anna changes her name from Wong Liu Tsong to Anna May Wong to better fit into the Hollywood film industry.

Anna is passed over for the leading role of Olan in The Good Earth, the part given to a white actress in yellowface.

Anna travels to China and reunites with her father in his village, where he urges her to return to China permanently.

Anna's younger sister Mary, an aspiring actress who never found success, dies by suicide.

An Asian man wins an Oscar for the first time, and Anna dies of cirrhosis shortly afterward.

Vincent Chin is beaten to death at his bachelor party by two white auto workers who mistake him for Japanese.

Chin's killers accept a plea deal and serve no prison time; community outrage eventually leads to a federal hate crime retrial.

John and Nola learn their intended baby has died, agree to adopt a different infant, and eventually name her Pearl.

The first section follows Ah Ling from his arrival at Uncle Ng's laundry through his work on the transcontinental railroad, ending with a devastating reunion with Little Sister in San Francisco. The second section traces Anna May Wong's rise in Hollywood, from her childhood infatuation with cinema through the career-defining slight of losing the role of Olan to a white actress in yellowface. Anna's story concludes with her death from cirrhosis, her ambitions ultimately outlasting the industry's willingness to honor them. The third section presents the murder of Vincent Chin at his bachelor party and the outrage sparked by the killers' near-total impunity, which forces the case into federal court as a hate crime. The fourth section closes the novel with John and Nola's adoption journey in China, which ends with the death of their intended baby and the quiet, painful decision to bring home a different child. Taken together, these events form the spine of a multi-generational portrait of Chinese American life shaped by racism, resilience, and historical forces beyond any individual's control.

The headline events driving each of the novel's four stories.

Ling is orphaned after his mother's death and sold to a man who arranges his passage to the United States.

Ling builds a kite that softens Little Sister's coldness toward him during his early days at Ng's laundry.

Ling gives Little Sister a gold piece for sex before leaving for Crocker's household; she remains cold and indifferent afterward.

Ling attends a meeting about the Chinese Question but escapes unrecognized because his western clothes disguise his Chinese identity.

Ling visits the striking Chinese railroad workers and realizes Crocker hired them specifically because he could pay them less than white workers.

The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, halting further immigration from China and marking the end of the first immigration wave.

Anna's father beats her for spending her savings on a movie ticket, but the punishment only deepens her love of cinema.

Anna becomes a celebrated flapper in her twenties, known for her stylish clothing, bobbed hair, and wealthy older lovers.

Anna travels to Europe during a difficult stretch of her career and meets Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson, experiencing remarkably little racism.

Luise Rainer wins an Oscar for her yellowface portrayal of Olan in The Good Earth, the role that was denied to Anna.

The Japanese invasion of China forces Anna's father to return to the United States, where he dies and is buried beside her mother.

The narrator recalls bonding with Vincent Chin during high school, both of them frequent targets of racist taunts from white classmates.

Vincent Chin's federal hate crime conviction is overturned on appeal, and the perpetrators are ultimately acquitted at retrial.

John and Nola stop in San Francisco's Chinatown en route to China, where John feels alienated and out of place.

John and Nola travel alone to the orphanage after the rest of their group receives babies on Gotcha Day without them.

Ling's story is deepened by the circumstances of his origins, the small acts of tenderness and transaction that mark his relationship with Little Sister, and the political milestones that bookend his time in America. Anna May Wong's narrative gains texture through her father's disapproval, her transformation into a flapper, her eye-opening trip to Europe, and the final blow of watching a white actress win an Oscar for the role she was denied. The third section draws on the narrator's memory of his high school friendship with Vincent Chin, establishing the personal foundation that makes Chin's murder and its legal aftermath so devastating. In the fourth section, John and Nola's disorienting journey begins even before they reach China, with a stop in San Francisco's Chinatown that leaves John feeling like a stranger to his own heritage. The pool closes with the couple making their way alone to the orphanage, separating from the group at the moment of greatest vulnerability. Together these events show how the margins of each story carry as much weight as the center.

The supporting moments that fill out each story's full narrative arc.

Ling is badly beaten during a racist delivery route attack, and Little Sister nurses his wounds while revealing her deep hatred of Chinese men.

Uncle Ng reveals he intended to adopt Ling and leave him the laundry, which would have meant Ling effectively owning Little Sister.

Little Sister reveals she is pregnant and that Uncle Ng is her biological father; Ng subsequently sells her.

Ling and Crocker travel by train to visit the striking workers, where Ling translates the Chinese crew's demand for equal wages.

Ling realizes he has always longed to belong among fellow Chinese workers rather than serve as Crocker's westernized valet.

Anna endures sexual assault by a director in order to secure her first credited film role.

Anna's earliest memory is of her father cutting his queue after the Chinese revolution, severing a link to the old imperial culture.

At a dim sum lunch in China, Anna realizes white actors in yellowface are celebrated for performing both a character and another race.

After accidentally insulting her welcome delegation, Anna is forbidden by the nationalist government from traveling inland to see her father.

Anna and Newsreel Wong say goodbye at the docks; she slips his pocket square from his jacket as a keepsake before boarding.

Anna arrives back in San Francisco and contemplates the long history of Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island.

Vincent Chin's mother Lily returns to China after her son's murder and remains there for the rest of her life.

The narrator finally visits a strip club years after Vincent's death and encounters an Asian dancer who refuses to identify her ethnicity.

The night before the adoption, John meets a sex worker named Pearl at the hotel bar and pays her only for conversation.

John and Nola run into Pearl in the hotel lobby on the way back from the orphanage; John feigns ignorance when Nola asks who she is.

Ling's story pivots on a series of painful revelations: Little Sister's confession about her hatred of Chinese men, Uncle Ng's calculated offer of adoption, and the moment Ling finally sees through Crocker's exploitation of the railroad workers. The culminating turn comes when Ling acknowledges his need to belong among his own people, a decision that costs him security but restores his sense of self. Anna's section is shaped by smaller but equally significant shifts — her silent humiliation when she is assaulted for a film credit, her dawning clarity about yellowface during a meal in China, and the moment she boards a ship home having finally seen her father. The third section turns on the aftermath of Vincent Chin's murder rather than the act itself, with his mother's departure for China and the narrator's lingering guilt crystallized in an unsettling visit to a strip club years later. The fourth section closes with two paired moments of concealment and naming: John saying nothing when his wife asks who Pearl is, and the couple quietly choosing to give that same name to their new daughter. Each event in this pool marks the instant a character's world quietly but permanently changes.

The discoveries, confrontations, and quiet reckonings that shift the course of each story.