After teacher Vasant Dashpande published a \u201crevolutionary newsletter that railed against the injustices of the British occupiers,\u201d he was nearly beaten to death by soldiers in British India. He heads to Bellingham, Washington, to escape the authorities and earn money working in a lumber mill. Upon arrival, he and his younger sister, Vinita (who joined him in order to escape their stifling village), along with other Indian workers, are met with suspicion due to racist stereotypes and long-simmering local political tensions. Henry Terwilliger, the managing editor of a failing local newspaper, conjures the idea of a \u201cHindoo invasion\u201d to bolster his readership, deriding \u201cthe Hindoo of the subtropical Indian jungles, a most despicable creature indeed.\u201d These reports and the mill\u2019s dismal, unequal working conditions set the stage for violence: Patel, the siblings\u2019 friend, loses his hand to a saw because of the actions of a white worker, and Vinita herself becomes the victim of an assault. The only bright spot in Vasant\u2019s life is Li, a Chinese maidservant, whom he\u2019s teaching to read English. The press continues to demonize South Asian laborers as the months pass, but it\u2019s the anti-Asian Labor Day rally, headed by the Asiatic Exclusion League, that pushes the town over the tipping point. Riots, arson, kidnapping, and racist violence soon erupt. Arab\u2019s historical novel about the 1907 Bellingham race riot effectively and starkly portrays what one character calls the \u201ccaste system based on race\u201d in pre\u2013World War I America, using straightforward prose and bare-bones worldbuilding. Overall, the story packs a significant emotional punch with its matter-of-fact depiction of brutal bigotry, poverty, and violence. That said, many of the characters feel underdeveloped, and there\u2019s little detail to make any of the players stand out. Some of them veer close to caricature, such as Terwilliger, whose manner is that of a mustache-twirling silent-movie villain.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After teacher Vasant Dashpande published a \u201crevolutionary newsletter that railed against the injustices of the British occupiers,\u201d he was nearly beaten to death by soldiers in British India. He heads to Bellingham, Washington, to escape the authorities and earn money working in a lumber mill. Upon arrival, he and his younger sister, Vinita (who joined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}