The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel

A Chinese woman came to America as an performer. The world lots interest in her when she stopped performing. However, she continued to live with the trauma of her life. Her descendents also had their own personal trauma. Even when things seemed to be going well, something would arise to cause them to spin into mental distress. 

This novel intersperses the stories of the lives of women across multiple generation in the past and future. There is the performer that met Andrew Jackson, the girl that escaped a San Francisco cholera epidemic, a 1920s boarding school student, a 1940s nurse, a 2014 computer programmer and a woman in the future undergoing an epigenetic therapy. Each had their own degree of joy and sorrow. In the end, the woman of the future is able to envision the small changes that could turn the sorrows into joy. This also helps her to find the joy in life and end the downward spiral that occurs after bed events.