The Downstairs Girl

In 1890 Atlanta, Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid by day and lives secretly in a hidden basement beneath a newspaper office, where she begins writing an anonymous agony-aunt column that becomes the talk of the city. Lee uses the column to let a Chinese American girl say what she cannot say aloud, and is sharp on a segregated South that had no category for her at all. Funny, angry and lightly worn.