In ‘Outrun the Moon,’ a Chinese American Girl Breaks the Barriers

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Photo Credit: Steve Cotton

We are taught that education is a great equalizer. With good schooling, many believe, young people can break free from oppressions related to race, gender and socioeconomic status. In 1906 California, not many—if any—Chinese girls were allowed access to high-quality schooling. Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to change this. She is the fierce young protagonist with an indomitable spirit in Stacey Lee’s second novel, Outrun the Moon.

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Plucky Mercy digs in her heels and uses her cunning wit to gain admittance into St. Clare’s School for Girls, a place that’s off-limits to all but the wealthiest of white girls. With a fortune-teller mother and a father who works 16-hour days in a laundromat, even Mercy knew that life at St. Clare’s would be anything but easy. After the Great Earthquake of 1906 strikes San Francisco, Mercy struggles to make sense of the enormity of the catastrophe and how to assist the community amidst such devastation. In the process, she challenges long-held assumptions and stereotypes that today’s readers will relate to all too well. Outrun the Moon, which has been awarded the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, is an engaging historical novel told from diverse perspectives, as well as a powerful testament to individual activism, self-determination and sheer grit.

Lee is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novel Under a Painted Sky. She resides in San Francisco but will visit Milwaukee for a speaking event at the Lynden Sculpture Garden at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 6. Co-sponsored by Boswell Book Co., tickets cost $14 and include a copy of the novel Outrun the Moon.