A review by eirenophile
Coolies by Yin, Yin

4.0

Wow. First, and inescapably, what great illustrations. They lent both a sense of isolation, vastness, intimacy, solidarity, and concreteness to a story that demanded all these things and yet could easily have failed to provide them. Second, this story was stark and unflinchingly real but still accessible because it was framed as the memory of a family's history. I think this is truly exceptional in a book about American history, about Asian American history, and about racism (which too often lose their place in feel good progress narratives or, more rarely, impersonal realism). I do not know, though, whether this story, in all its length and its lack of some key tropes, would really be a kid favorite (and not having kids, can't test this). Nevertheless, it is a really good one.