SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About TLT
  • Reviews
    • Book Reviews
    • A to Z Book Lists
    • Book Review Policy
  • Teen Issues
  • Middle Grade Mondays
  • Programs
    • TPiB
    • Tech Talk
  • Professional
    • Teen Services 101
    • Things We Didn’t Learn in Library School
  • MakerSpace
  • Projects
    • #SVYALit
    • #FSYALit
    • #MHYALit
    • #Poverty in YA Lit

March 31, 2022 by Amanda MacGregor

Whose Story, a guest post by Betty G. Yee

March 31, 2022 by Amanda MacGregor   Leave a Comment

The idea for Gold Mountain began with a character: a Chinese girl disguising herself as a boy.  It wasn’t long before I placed her in a setting I had long held an interest in: 1865 and the construction of the American transcontinental railroad. All my life I’ve heard about the thousands of Chinese sojourners who worked on the transcontinental railroad, and how dangerous that work was. I was curious about who the workers were. Here was a chance to find a face and a story for those unknown people.

I began with some general research– to get my feet wet, so to speak. My plan was to get a sense of the milieu, create an engaging plot and interesting characters, then add the pertinent historical facts as necessary. As it turned out, writing historical fiction is not that simple. A lot depends on whose story you want to tell.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

As I conducted my research, I was amazed at the enormous hardships the Chinese workers endured. Everything I learned: from the backbreaking labor of digging through a granite mountain range, to the brutal winter months, to enduring the indignity of bigotry, and exploitation, all added up to an incredible story that needed to be told.

In the spring of  2012, I had my overall plot, but my characters needed development. I’d reached the stage where I couldn’t do this without a deeper understanding of the world of the Chinese sojourners. I had question after question. Who were the sojourners? Why did they go to America? Was it only just for money? What were their names? What did they leave behind? What were their hopes and dreams? They endured remarkable hardship while working on the transcontinental railroad. Was it worth it?

Finding the answers to these questions was surprisingly difficult. To be sure, there was plenty of information on the men who funded the railroad, the men who planned it, the men who became famous for it afterward. There was a lot of information on mechanical and technical aspects of the railroad itself–the elevation of it at certain places, the amount of track laid at others. This historical information was useful, but not what I needed. These facts fueled the story of the white men involved in the project. Where was factual fuel for the story of the thousands of Chinese who lived and died while building the transcontinental railroad?  Why was it easier to learn the number of miles the Sierra Nevada tunnels ran than it was to find the names of the people who carved them out by hand at great peril to themselves? Why did the historical narrative feel skewed towards westerners?

A case in point is the iconic photograph celebrating the completion of the transcontinental railroad taken at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Close examination of it will reveal that with the exception of possibly two figures, all the men appear to be white. Chinese sojourners made up approximately ninety percent of the Central Pacific Railroad’s workforce, yet they are conspicuously missing in the famous image.

I dug as much as I could with my limited resources. I searched for but was unable to find primary sources such as letters, journals, or even a list of employee names on a payroll to inform my research. I relied on secondary sources. Stephen E. Ambrose’s Nothing Like It In the World and Lila Perl’s To the Golden Mountain were especially informative.

Bit by bit, I pieced together what everyday life might have been like for the sojourners.

Even so, the secondary sources of historical information are not without their controversies. One example of this is the curious question of the use of baskets at Cape Horn, a particularly daunting area in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  According to some, Chinese blasters used baskets that hung off the cliff tops of Cape Horn.  Other sources are adamant that since there is no physical evidence of baskets at Cape Horn, the use of baskets by the Chinese may be apochryphal.  Still others argue that the baskets were certainly used, citing anecdotal tales as well as the fact that such baskets were commonly used in the gorges around  the Yangtze River in China at the time.

The former argument made less sense to me as so much about the sojourners was not preserved. Their names, for instance, don’t exist on payroll ledgers, but does this mean that thousands of workers never came to America?

I realized that one of the greatest challenges to writing historical fiction is in balancing historical facts with the needs of the story. In this particular case, the facts, such as they were, were in opposition. I wanted to acknowledge both sides, so I tried to weave a creative thread to allow both arguments in my novel.

Thousands of Chinese worked on the western portion of the transcontinental railroad, yet very little is known about their lives and who they were.  I hope that in writing Ling Fan’s story, I’ve put one face on these nameless workers, and that this will open the door for readers to search for others.

**If you are interested in further information about the Chinese railroad workers, please check out the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University Their research was published in 2019 and contains extensive information I wish I had when I was researching Gold Mountain!

Meet the author

Betty G. Yee was born and raised in Massachusetts. She spent much of her early life reimagining her favorite stories or writing sequels to them. 


Betty has been an elementary school teacher for over twenty years. When she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys traveling, bike riding, eating french fries and immersing herself in the words and worlds of other writers. She lives with her two bossy cats, Zara and Piper.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT


Her stories can be found in The Drum Literary Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Frost Fire Worlds, and RAZ Kids. She is the recipient of SCBWIs 2011 Multi-Cultural Works-In-Progress Grant. Gold Mountain is her first novel.

Website: https://bettygyee.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bgyeewriter
Twitter: @B_Yee09
Instagram: @bgyeewriter
Email: bgyeewriter@comcast.net
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57223569-gold-mountain

About Gold Mountain

Working on the Transcontinental Railroad promises a fortune—for those who survive.

Growing up in 1860s China, Tam Ling Fan has lived a life of comfort. Her father is wealthy enough to provide for his family but unconventional enough to spare Ling Fan from the debilitating foot-binding required of most well-off girls. But Ling Fan’s life is upended when her brother dies of influenza and their father is imprisoned under false accusations. Hoping to earn the money that will secure her father’s release, Ling Fan disguises herself as a boy and takes her brother’s contract to work for the Central Pacific Railroad Company in America.

Life on “the Gold Mountain” is grueling and dangerous. To build the railroad that will connect the west coast to the east, Ling Fan and other Chinese laborers lay track and blast tunnels through the treacherous peaks of the Sierra Nevada, facing cave-ins, avalanches, and blizzards—along with hostility from white Americans.

When someone threatens to expose Ling Fan’s secret, she must take an even greater risk to save what’s left of her family . . . and to escape the Gold Mountain alive.

ISBN-13: 9781728415826
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/05/2022
Age Range: 12+

Filed under: Uncategorized

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
ChineseGuest postsTranscontinental railroad

About Amanda MacGregor

Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

May 2022

Have Some Mysteries and Thrillers for June Through December

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Tackling Your Children's Collection Diversity Audit, a TLA presentation recap

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Mindfulness in the Library, a guest post by Erica B. Marcus

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Cindy Crushes Programming: DIY Paper Flowers

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

In SLJ: Verse Novelists Forge a Unique Connection with Young Readers

by Amanda MacGregor

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

Shark Week and Earl Grey Tea: Bob Shea and Brian Won on The Yarn Podcast

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Have You Seen the Darkness? A Richard Fairgray, Black Sand Beach Interview

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review | Red and Rover: Fun’s Never Over

by Mike Pawuk

Heavy Medal

Mock Newbery Update – Our List of First Half Suggestions

by Steven Engelfried

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Book Review: The Name She Gave Me by Betty Culley

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Shark Week, Vanilla Ice Cream, and the Honda CRV: Bob Shea and Brian Won Team Up for ADURABLE

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

43 Top Titles by Kwame Mbalia, Jeff Zentner, Julie Flett and More | Starred Reviews, August 2021

Download a PDF of the USBBY's 2022 Outstanding International Books List

Making Space for Math in the Library

Virtual Science Labs, Flipped Classrooms Flourish After a Remote Year

26 Must-Have Latinx YA Books Filled with Romance, History, and Magical Realism

Commenting for all posts is disabled after 30 days.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2022


COPYRIGHT © 2022