Read The BC Review's Piece on Lily Chow's Hard is the Journey

Read The BC Review's Piece on Lily Chow's Hard is the Journey

Read Ron Verzuh's review of Lily Chow's Hard is the Journey: Stories of Chinese Settlement in British Columbia’s Kootenay

By Malaika Aleba|Date: February 17, 2023

Ron Verzuh reviewed Lily Chow's Hard is the Journey: Stories of Chinese Settlement in British Columbia’s Kootenay in the BC Review. 

From the BC Review: 

Looking Deeper into History: The Trails of Chinese Immigrants Revealed in the Kootenays

What a pleasant surprise to see Cameron Mah on the first page of Lily Chow’s new book.

Everyone knew Cam as the waiter at the Marlene Hotel café in Castlegar, BC, and later the Hilite café where we congregated after school for chips and gravy and an Orange Crush. Everyone liked Cam, too. Unsubstantiated rumour had it that his boss Yorkie Mah had imported him as slave labour.

So, Chow’s book brought back old childhood memories, but it also rekindled the unspoken fact that we were racist back then and that Cam and one other Chinese family were almost invisible to local white society. As Chow points out, it was a long tradition that goes back to the pioneer days of gold mining, railway building, salmon fishing in the Columbia River. In fact, prejudice and discrimination against Chinese people were a legislated tradition.

Read the full review here.