Book Review: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See presents a sweeping, emotionally charged tale of sisterhood, sacrifice, and survival set against the turbulent backdrop of 20th-century Chinese and Chinese American history. With vivid prose and unflinching honesty, See explores how war, immigration, and cultural expectations shape — and sometimes strain — the bonds between women.
The novel follows Pearl and May, two glamorous sisters living in 1930s Shanghai, who are forced to flee their privileged lives after political unrest and family tragedy shatter their world. Their journey takes them from the cosmopolitan streets of Shanghai to the immigration barracks of Angel Island, and finally to the Chinatown of Los Angeles, where new struggles await. Bound by a promise to their parents and by a complicated love for one another, the sisters navigate poverty, racism, and the weight of secrets that threaten to pull them apart.
See’s meticulous historical detail brings each setting to life, from the collapse of Shanghai’s golden age to the tension of McCarthy-era America. But it is the emotional core of the novel — the complex, evolving relationship between Pearl and May — that gives the story its lasting impact. Their bond is tested by jealousy, trauma, and betrayal, yet remains achingly real and deeply human.
Shanghai Girls is both a gripping historical narrative and an intimate portrait of family ties that are at once nurturing and suffocating. Lisa See’s exploration of identity, resilience, and the immigrant experience is timely and timeless, revealing how the past continues to shape the present in unexpected ways.
This novel is a moving tribute to the courage of women who endure, adapt, and protect what matters most — even when doing so requires great personal cost.
About Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.
As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.
