Book Review: Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama offers a beautifully rendered portrait of a hidden world — the community of women who worked in China’s silk factories during the early 20th century. With lyrical prose and quiet emotional power, Tsukiyama explores the lives of women bound not by family or marriage, but by sisterhood, resilience, and shared labor.
The novel centers on Pei, a young girl sent away from her rural home to work in a silk factory in Yung Kee. What could have been a story of abandonment becomes one of self-discovery, as Pei finds strength and belonging among the women she lives and works with. Over time, she comes to view the silk house not as a place of exile, but as a chosen family — a sanctuary where women forge their own identities and create lives outside the confines of traditional expectations.
Tsukiyama’s writing is quietly powerful, filled with sensory detail that brings both the silk-making process and the women’s inner lives to vivid life. She captures the tenderness, the heartbreak, and the rare joys of a world often overlooked — one shaped by long hours, whispered confidences, and fiercely protected bonds.
While the novel is intimate in scope, it touches on broader themes: the economic and social forces that shape women’s lives, the price of independence, and the small, defiant choices that make up a life of dignity. There is sorrow here, but also great strength — and a quiet kind of revolution in how these women care for one another.
Women of the Silk is a deeply human story — a tribute to friendship, endurance, and the quiet power of women who, despite limitations, find ways to weave meaning, purpose, and love into the fabric of their lives.
About Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
In Women of the Silk Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk.
Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own. Tsukiyama’s graceful prose weaves the details of “the silk work” and Chinese village life into a story of courage and strength.
