The Girls of Good Fortune

“To secure a job, Celia had quickly learned to present her surname not as Chung but Hart, her mother’s maiden name. Even her prideful father hadn’t objected to the pragmatic charade.”

The novel extensively examines marginalized people’s use of Assimilation as a Survival Strategy, acknowledging that in some cases, the only way to avoid harm is to deny essential parts of one’s own identity. When Celia’s father, who is Chinese, concedes to her choice to pretend to be white, his reaction reflects his resigned understanding of the barriers and the prejudices that his daughter would face if she were considered to be Chinese.

“Alone with him in this barn, a universe of their own making, with his hands resting on her hips, she felt protected, cherished.”

The languid, romantic tone of this passage highlights the young Celia’s naiveté as she basks in Stephen’s love and affection and imagines that she might not have to contend with the very real prejudices that will stand in opposition to her budding romance with this scion of upper-class white culture. As she falls in love with Stephen, the novel suggests that the couple’s love, if sustained, may successfully transcend the barriers of culture, class, and religion alike. Their relationship is paralleled by Celia’s memory of her parents’ union, and the private world that they build together acknowledges no prejudice, standing as an ironic contrast to the reality of the external world.

“It was guilt that weighed on her, heavy as lead: shame for not answering her father’s letter; for not being the obedient daughter he deserved; for her selfishness, in thought and intention if nothing else.”

As Celia grieves over her father’s brutal murder at the hands of a white mob, a number of complex emotions cause her to experience a deep internal conflict. In this passage, the image of lead is used to convey the crucial idea that what truly weighs her down is the guilt that she feels over her own behavior, which does not align with Chinese traditions like filial piety toward one’s elders. In this moment, she feels that her rejection of her father’s traditions is a form of an injustice as sharp as a physical attack.

“Celia scanned her meager belongings in a space that, over the course of three years, she had come to consider her home. Swiftly she was reminded that it had never been that at all.”

When a pregnant Celia faces summary removal from the Bettencourt household, this moment stands as just one of the many displacements that she will experience due to her precarious social status. Her current crisis reflects her tenuous status as a person of multiple ethnicities, and in her ensuing search for a secure home, she will be surprised at her success in Finding Support among Marginalized People.

“He had been insistent she sound ‘American’—until years later, when he finally yearned to teach her. By then, she’d lost all interest and, more than that, became averse herself to being viewed as different.”

This passage captures Celia’s complex views on the issue of cultural assimilation. As a young person, she would rather sound like an American and pass as white than deal with the difficulties of being perceived as different. However, because she has chosen not to learn her father’s native language, she has a series of uncomfortable encounters in which she also feels “othered” in the presence of Chinese people. As a result, she begins to wonder there is any place she truly belongs. Coming to terms with her complex identity is therefore a key element of her character development.

“Fortune rests in misfortune. It was an old proverb Celia’s father had passed along, an ancient belief of balance: that good and bad luck were intertwined, with one inevitably, in some form, following the other.”

Celia’s reflection on her father’s teachings suggests that after his murder, he remains a presence in her thoughts and in her life, motivating some of her most crucial actions. His belief in the balance between fortune and misfortune is also reflected in the patterns of conflict that appear in the novel.

“She’d read The History of Tom Thumb as a young girl. Three times, in fact, having found a particular connection to a character viewed and treated differently by others.”

By providing brief but suggestive glimpses of Celia’s childhood interests, the author suggests that the protagonist was treated differently from a very young age. Being marginalized by schoolmates and others because of her half-white, half-Chinese heritage, she turned instead to literature to find figures with whom to identify. Her sense of rapport with the fictional character of Tom Thumb is a prime example of her instinctive need to find a sense of belonging anywhere she can.

“Despite her reality of floating untethered, she couldn’t go back on her word. She couldn’t betray Stephen nor her heart.”

Celia’s feeling of “floating untethered” becomes a vivid metaphor for the idea that her multiethnic heritage condemns her to a liminal space and denies her access to many of the staples of mainstream society. When she maintains her steadfast loyalty to Stephen and declines Timothy Vale’s offer of marriage despite her lack of home or shelter, she demonstrates her belief in the romantic hope that she and her absent fiancé might one day build a life together despite all the social pressures ranged against them.

“Chinese, Celia realized with dread. Her newborn’s features were surely Chinese, causing confusion for all.”

Even at the joyous moment of Pearl’s birth, Celia’s first thought is infused with the deep, abiding fear that her daughter may have Chinese facial features and may therefore be condemned to societal prejudice that Celia herself has partially been able to avoid. Even this defining moment of Celia’s life is tainted by the injustices of the world she lives in, proving that her circumstances have forced her to prioritize Assimilation as a Survival Strategy.

“Celia had heard vaguely of a Chinese practice involving such instruments [needles], a means to treat various ailments, even phobias. But it had all seemed as contrived and nonsensical as the countless superstitions brought from the Far East.”

Celia’s lack of understanding about the use of acupuncture in traditional Chinese medicine causes her to equate this time-honored practice with “superstition,” and her attitude reflects her distance from her father’s traditional Chinese culture. Celia’s own prejudices, like her disapproval of sex work, reflect that she, too, has been influenced by the unjust attitudes of American society; however, unlike those who have persecuted her, she does not offer discrimination to others—especially when they are trying to help her.

“Never would she have imagined calling a brothel her home. Even so, she was grateful.”

Celia’s attitude toward the Dewdrop Inn changes drastically as she begins to incorporate her own presence into the threads of this tight-knit community. Initially, she sees it as a place with degrading associations, but when Marie and Lettie welcome her unconditionally and offer her a safe place to raise her child, she begins to see the brothel as a home. As she grows attached to Lettie and forms a lasting bond with Marie, these events convince Celia of the value of Finding Support among Marginalized People.

“Though she still longed for Stephen’s return, she’d learned from her parents that distance alone wouldn’t weaken a true relationship—nor, in the end, would it lessen the bond between a father and daughter.”

The bond between Celia’s parents offers her a positive model for her own attachment to Stephen, and she takes heart at the thought that her parents maintained their love for one another despite the differences in their ethnic backgrounds and her father’s long, work-related absences. Likewise, the bonds between father and daughter continues to resonate after her father’s death, motivating her to try to achieve justice for the Chinese men who were murdered in Hells Canyon.

“There was no visit. No word. And the earth kept right on spinning as the guilty went unpunished.”

The question of who receives justice and who does not—and why—is a prevailing concern of the novel. Ironically, Celia has no power of her own with which to dispense justice, so she must do her best to persuade others to do what is right. Her growing frustration with the blatant flaws of this broken system illustrate the powerlessness of her marginalized status.

“Always, you must be a proper lady, Celia’s mother had insisted from early on, whether discussing posture and manners or studies and diction. It is essential to be dignified and viewed respectably at all times.”

Celia’s memory of her mother’s instruction is one of the rare moments in which her mother is featured in the book, and as an adult, Celia recognizes that this advice was always designed to keep Celia from attracting unwanted attention or giving others an excuse to mistreat her. In line with the novel’s themes about assimilation, Celia resolves to teach Pearl similar lessons in order to ensure that her daughter will be less likely to become a target of racist violence.

“Her mind […] was still struggling to reconcile how the sustaining promise she’d clung to for nearly three years, the dream of a future awaiting her and her child—Stephen’s child—was but an illusion.”

In this forlorn passage, Celia’s loyalty to Stephen takes center stage, and despite his long absence and the many challenges that have complicated her life, she continues to believe that he will keep his promise. This determination mirrors her hope of achieving for justice for her father’s murder and the murder of the other Chinese miners at the hands of racist white men.

“For the first time to her memory, she yearned for a spot that straddled the border.”

Celia’s admission to Marie that she is half Chinese is a turning point in which she acknowledges her identity rather than trying to hide it. This wish to reveal herself fully resurfaces when she sees how the spectators in the courtroom at Frank’s trial are segregated. Her fragile new willingness to identity with her Chinese father will eventually culminate in her exchange with the Chinese couple in the freight car, at which point she will fully acknowledge her heritage.

“She became [aware] of an unusual response from gentlemen in passing. No whistles, no leers. No vulgar remarks. The refreshing invisibility bolstered her confidence, giving her a sense of how men navigated through the world.”

When dressing as a man to meet Owen, Celia revels in the automatic acceptance she receives and realizes just how profoundly different a man’s experience of the world must be. The world “invisibility” is crucial in this passage; as a woman and a member of a marginalized class, Celia has learned to make herself as invisible as she can. This tactic reflects her constant focus on using Assimilation as a Survival Strategy so that she may avoid becoming the target of discrimination or outright physical harm.

“It didn’t take living in a brothel to recognize her occupation. Whereas Celia once viewed ladies of her like as inferior—shamefully at that—she now felt only compassion.”

While Celia’s aversion to sex work remains, she does acknowledge the prejudice that she held when she was younger. Part of her character arc is to learn to accept the sex workers at the Dewdrop Inn. Rather than instinctively dehumanizing them, she learns to respect the choices that they make for their own survival. Although her compassion might still carry a note of condescension or pity, she no longer exhibits outright scorn for those who engage in sex work.

“Blending in had long been her key to survival—quite literally, in this case.”

When Celia is dressed as a man aboard ship, her contemplations about blending in reflect her long experience of pretending to be a member of a dominant group. In this case, being regarded as a man protects her from becoming the target of sexual violence. Thus, her current predicament reveals that as a woman and as a person with Chinese heritage, she faces danger and discrimination on multiple fronts.

“They burst into laughter. She’d almost forgotten the feeling of such pure, innocent merriment, the nostalgia of someone she used to be—particularly when in the company of the man she’d loved.”

The humor of those who have taken refuge around the campfire in San Francisco portrays the deep value in Finding Support among Marginalized People, and the outburst of humor balances the high level of tension that besets Celia at this point in the novel. Small mentions of her love for Stephen also foreshadow their surprise reunion upon her return to Portland.

“Celia hadn’t believed her own heart capable of aching again from betrayal, not after Stephen’s, but she was wrong.”

Celia’s discovery that Lettie arranged for her to meet Owen under false pretenses—and even agreed to participate in a plot to separate Celia from Pearl—causes Celia to feel a deep sense of betrayal at her friend’s actions. Her distress at this crisis echoes her outrage over the violence against Chinese immigrants that has occurred elsewhere, for Celia now acutely feels the lack of security in a place that she once believed to be a sanctuary from the world’s injustices.

“She’d caught whispers about women sent away after being labeled ‘hysterical’ by doctors—sometimes for merely being outspoken because their husbands wished to move on with a mistress.”

The judge’s decision that Celia should be sent to Brentwood Asylum represents another threat to women’s well-being in this period of history: the danger of involuntary commitment, sometimes on fabricated grounds. The judge’s misunderstanding of Celia’s defense stands as one of several instances in which Celia’s identity is mistaken, assumed, or misrepresented.

“She recognized more than ever: the stories people tell, to themselves above all, were often what kept them going.”

As Celia reflects on what she will say when she returns to the Dewdrop, she reflects on the power of stories to motivate difficult actions or explain impossible circumstances. This brief meditation alludes to the prologue, in which the narrator reflects on the importance of telling stories. In this passage, Celia’s reflections also highlight her determination to cling to hope in the face of all her struggles, choosing to believe that the stories she tells about her own life will give her the strength to move forward to the next chapter.