The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, “Dear Miss Sweetie.” When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society’s ills, but she’s not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender.
While her opponents clamor to uncover the secret identity of Miss Sweetie, a mysterious letter sets Jo off on a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta’s most notorious criminal, Jo must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light.
- File Name:the-downstairs-girl-by-stacey-lee.epub
- Original Title:The Downstairs Girl
- Creator:Stacey Lee
- Language:en
- Identifier:uuid:b51ed85a-973a-4031-8bdc-84e5535899f2
- Publisher:Penguin Young Readers Group
- Date:2019-08-13T00:00:00+00:00
- File Size:1.069 MB
Table of Content
- 1. Cover
- 2. Also by Stacey Lee
- 3. Title Page
- 4. Copyright
- 5. Dedication
- 6. Contents
- 7. One
- 8. Two
- 9. Three
- 10. Four
- 11. Five
- 12. Six
- 13. Seven
- 14. Eight
- 15. Nine
- 16. Ten
- 17. Eleven
- 18. Twelve
- 19. Thirteen
- 20. Fourteen
- 21. Fifteen
- 22. Sixteen
- 23. Seventeen
- 24. Eighteen
- 25. Nineteen
- 26. Twenty
- 27. Twenty-One
- 28. Twenty-Two
- 29. Twenty-Three
- 30. Twenty-Four
- 31. Twenty-Five
- 32. Twenty-Six
- 33. Twenty-Seven
- 34. Twenty-Eight
- 35. Twenty-Nine
- 36. Thirty
- 37. Thirty-One
- 38. Thirty-Two
- 39. Thirty-Three
- 40. Thirty-Four
- 41. Thirty-Five
- 42. Thirty-Six
- 43. Thirty-Seven
- 44. Thirty-Eight
- 45. Thirty-Nine
- 46. Forty
- 47. Forty-One
- 48. Forty-Two
- 49. Forty-Three
- 50. Forty-Four
- 51. Forty-Five
- 52. Epilogue
- 53. Author’s Note
- 54. Acknowledgments
- 55. About the Author
It isn't often a book has a Chinese heroine, so this book and cover stood out for me. Jo, a 17 year old Chinese orphan is getting by in the deep South as best she can with Old Gin. Her moxie, perseverance and candor make her a very likable character that you find yourself rooting for. The historical timing of this book was not new to me, but I had no idea how racially biased the South was toward Chinese. This amazed me and made the book both interesting and heartbreaking. I would have liked to know more about Jo and her upbringing with Old Gin. There are flashbacks to give a small bit of that background, but it was so well written, I would have liked more pages just to beef the novel out in this regard.
Jo had some aspects in her background that gave her advantages others of her time would not have had - such as horse back riding and so on. But her living conditions, while the characters were happy and content, showed just how difficult it was to survive in those times. Hats off to the small amount of information given about the suffrage movement of the time! Definitely a worthwhile read, enjoyable, humorous at times, and finely written.