The Jade Peony...Amazing read

This is a book that I read for school but I'm just amazingly glad that I read it. It's a novel set in Vancouver's Chinatown during the 1930's & 40's and it centers on one family. Sounds simple enough. The unique thing is that the chapters are broken up into chunks of narrative that are told according to the point of view of the 3 younger siblings of a family that has 4 children. World History, personal histories, mythology, opinions, and social stigmas, race relations....there's too much too put down. It's all discussed in this book according to The only daughter, The middle Son, and The youngest Son. The amazing thing for me about this book is that it discusses the issues regarding sense of belonging, personal identity, and living in between cultures with humanity. The characters have biases and limitations. They know as little about other racial groups as those groups do about them. Chinese myths are mixed with Tarzan, Robin Hood, and Captain Marvel. Kids pick up racist terms like "japs", grandparents think that the old country was so much better and use the same cultural rules despite a change of place & context, what country do you belong to when you're officially a "resident alien", domestic violence is framed in a cultural context that condemns & supports it? what "roles" are we supposed to take as part of your "original" culture? Is it justifiable to say that your nationality or cultural group needs to build a niche for themselves in a new country yet discriminate against other groups doing the same thing because their original country is the "enemy" during war time (Chinese vs. Japanese)
.....I could go on but I should probably stop.

There's also a sequel that I plan on tracking down that's called "All that Matters"...
I related to this book so much. The immigrant experience and the eventual experience of the children of those immigrants is universal.

I'm having trouble describing this book clearly. It's about the social intersection of cultures in WWII Era Vancouver specifically in Chinatown. I think that it's amazing & would recommend anybody to read it.