Luck of the Titanic

In Luck of the Titanic, Valora attempts to find her twin brother Jamie on the Titanic and audition for a circus owner who is on board. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act in America, she is turned away at the gangway despite having a ticket. As a stowaway, Valora disguises herself as her former employer, who was originally planning to join her but passed away. As Valora pretends to be a first-class passenger, she must grapple with prejudice, discrimination, and the possibility that Jamie might not want to go with her, unaware that this journey might be her last.

I really enjoyed this book. It portrays not only the difficulties of being Chinese during this period but also shows how hard it could be to be half Chinese, which is not typically represented in historical fiction. It was also fascinating to learn that this story was based loosely off of actual events: there were Chinese men on board the Titanic, and unlike the other survivors of the Titanic, these men were vilified due to anti-Chinese sentiment in the US. Although the book focuses on the voyage, the prejudice against the Chinese on board is shown to be especially harsh, and the author includes a description of the real Chinese survivors of the Titanic in her afterword.