The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is a 2022 novel by Asian American author Jamie Ford. Ford often writes novels about family, ethnicity, and identity. His starting point for this novel was the historical figure Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to immigrate to America. Few records of Afong’s life survive, but the newspaper articles and advertisements related to her work as an actor, model, and salesperson indicate a difficult life. Ford uses these records to explore the epigenetic patterns and pains inherited by the fictional descendants of Afong Moy. The novel focuses particularly on Dorothy Moy, who undergoes epigenetic therapy in Seattle in 2045. She carries the burdens of five generations of Moys, who claim Agency in the Face of Racism and Misogyny and find that Buddhist Doctrines Bring Hope and Peace. Thanks to The Power of Epigenetics, Dorothy finds the healing that her foremothers have desperately sought for generations. This study guide uses the first hardcover edition published in 2022 by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

Content Warning: This text deals with suicidal ideation, sexual abuse, physical abuse, multiple instances of medical trauma, exploitation based on race and culture, and occasional ethnic slurs. Additionally, there is an emotionally intimate relationship between a teenager and her teacher.

Plot Summary

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy unfolds in nonlinear fashion, beginning with a nurse named Faye Moy saving an American pilot after he crashes in Kunming, China during World War II. The pilot, John Garland, looks familiar, and she is shocked to discover that he has a newspaper clipping of a picture of her with “find me” written on the back in her handwriting. She has never met him before, but he is handsome and seems kind.

In 2045, Dorothy Moy, lives in a monsoon-plagued version of Seattle. Although Dorothy has attained the status of Seattle’s poet laureate, she spent most of her childhood in and out of foster care and has experienced mental illness and suicidal ideation for most of her life. She lives in a high-rise apartment with her daughter, Annabel, and her partner, Louis. Annabel seems to be showing some of the same tendencies as her mother; she constantly draws pictures of WWII pilots crashing and 19th-century boats with small boys calling out to her. She also has disturbing dreams and daydreams at daycare. Meanwhile, Louis is impatient and detached: Dorothy’s story begins with him abandoning her to walk home alone from the grocery store during the beginnings of a monsoon.

Dorothy finds hope in the new epigenetic treatments Dr. Shedhorn is providing. She learns that she holds not only her trauma but the trauma of all the generations of women who have gone before her. Through a series of injections, Dorothy has visions of Faye and several other women, whose stories are interspersed among Dorothy’s.

These women include Afong Moy, who is living in Baltimore in 1836. The man she was betrothed to (against her will) in Canton suddenly died, and his surviving wives sent her to America to be rid of her. She has since fallen under the power of Mr. and Mrs. Hannington, who have turned her into a public spectacle: They profit off exhibitions of her bound feet, her skill with chopsticks, and a generally exploitative and racist depiction of life in China. Afong speaks no English and is totally dependent upon the Hanningtons for food shelter, clothing, and meager wages. She yearns to return to China and reunite with Yao Han, an impoverished scholar she has loved since childhood.

One day, the Hanningtons employ a handsome young interpreter, Nanchoy, to teach Afong English and help “manage” her. He helps the illiterate Afong write letters home for her mother and Yao Han. However, Nanchoy soon reports that Yao Han is dead. In Afong’s grief, he preys on her, raping her repeatedly. Meanwhile, the Hanningtons have been advertising the very last shows of “The Chinese Lady.” When she realizes Mr. Hannington has given Nanchoy permission to marry her, Afong creates a commotion during her final performance before slipping away. Nanchoy follows her, and she stabs and kills him before disappearing into the night. She would later die in labor, giving birth to Nanchoy’s child.

Another subject of Dorothy’s visions is her own mother, Greta, who creates a successful, woman-oriented dating app called Syren in 2014. Around the same time, she falls in love with Sam, a man her parents found at the Shanghai Matchmaking Market. However, she loses her job and this budding relationship when Syren’s angel investor, Carter, assaults her after they have dinner together, hoping to cause a scandal around the date the dating app to sell his shares and make a tidy profit. Greta spends the rest of her life seeking out men who looked like Sam but ultimately died in a psychiatric hospital.

In 1927, Greta’s paternal grandmother, Zoe, attends a boarding school in England that runs as a democracy: At Summerhill, each person gets one vote on all decisions, regardless of age or status. Zoe has a crush on her teacher, Mrs. Bidwell, who sources a collection of Sappho’s poetry for Zoe to read. When Zoe goes to the library to pick it up a boy named Guto holds it hostage until she kisses him. As her relationship with Mrs. Bidwell deepens in emotional intensity, a school meeting votes to experiment with fascism for a week. The other students bar Zoe and her non-British peers from class and force them to complete chores. Guto compels Zoe to submit to this regime by seizing her collection of Sappho, which contains a love letter she wrote to Mrs. Bidwell. Late one night, Mrs. Bidwell summons Zoe with a lily and says goodbye in a veiled fashion. The next day, Zoe learns that Guto mailed her letter to Mrs. Bidwell’s husband, who sent it to the local newspaper and committed his wife to a psychiatric hospital. Zoe visits Mrs. Bidwell and finds her a shell of her former self.

Lai King, Afong Moy’s granddaughter, is a girl during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in San Francisco in 1892. The epidemic heightens the era’s racism, resulting in a strict quarantine of Chinatown. Her father earns enough money to buy Lai King passage on a ship headed for Hong Kong. As she boards, government officials begin “cleansing” the area by burning it down, and the last thing she sees of her hometown is her mother surrounded by flames. While on board the ship, she makes friends with a young boy named Alby, who eventually starts showing signs of the disease. Lai King nurses him until he abruptly vanishes; the captain will not tell her if he is quarantined or dead, but she suspects the crew covertly buried him at sea.

Faye’s experiences are most directly linked to Dorothy’s treatment. The mysterious pilot dies shortly after surgery, and Faye grieves for him in the makeshift mortuary where he is prepared for burial. While there, she meets a monk named Shi, who helps her accept all that has happened in her life, including her teenage pregnancy (she gave the child—Zoe—up for adoption). Although she doesn’t have answers about John Garland, she is glad to have met him and to have had the opportunity to find peace.

As Dorothy’s epigenetic treatment continues, she goes on a boat ride with Annabel. The experience triggers an epigenetic memory of Faye’s voyage to Kunming. As Faye, Dorothy meets, dances, and flirts with John Garland but is pulled back to the present before things can go further: Annabel is also in the midst of an epigenetic episode, looking for Alby as Lai King. Annabel nearly goes overboard, and Dorothy responds to the near accident by grabbing her daughter. When Dorothy gets home, she learns that Louis and his mother have been having her followed and have footage of her reaction. They threaten to use it to sue for custody of Annabel.

Dorothy whisks Annabel away to a friend’s house and seeks out Dr. Shedhorn, hoping for a breakthrough in her treatment that will help her prove her worthiness as a mother. Due to the impending Typhoon Tenjin and a legal injunction filed by Louis, Dr. Shedhorn can’t give Dorothy an injection, but she does give her several doses of a protein designed to maintain Dorothy’s progress.

Dejected, Dorothy finds shelter at a Buddhist temple and takes all of the doses at once. This sends her into a deep coma where she makes decisions that heal much of the trauma. As Greta, she tips off a reporter about Carter before connecting with Sam. As Zoe, she takes the volume of Sappho without kissing Guto and suggests matriarchy as an experimental form of government rather than fascism. This inspires Mrs. Bidwell to take a journalistic job and leave her husband. She writes Zoe a letter to say goodbye and promises to find her eventually. A journalist writes an article about Zoe and Summerhill, including a picture of Zoe—actually Dorothy. As Dorothy transitions into Faye’s memories, the picture still depicts her. As Faye, Dorothy joins John Garland back on the boat. He steps out, and she writes “Find me” on the back of the clipping and slips it into his jacket. He comes back with a stethoscope and has Dorothy listen to his heart as he kisses her. As Lai King, Dorothy stays with Alby as he dies and watches his burial. Finally, rather than becoming Afong, Dorothy finds Afong as she gives birth in a deserted alley. This time, however, Yao Han finds her. Dorothy comes to in the Buddhist temple as a kind police officer administers CPR to her. She recovers and they agree to find each other someday.

The novel ends with Annabel in 2086. She mourns her mother’s passing with Dr. Shedhorn during an epigenetic treatment. Then, she goes to a writers’ retreat where she meets and connects with another writer. There is every hope that Annabel will establish a relationship with this kind and attractive man, thanks to the epigenetic healing she and her mother have experienced.