The Downstairs Girl Study Guide

Stacey Lee is a fourth-generation Chinese American. Her mother’s family came to San Francisco in the 1800s, and her father was a “paper son” (Chinese immigrant who purchased false documents) who came to San Francisco in 1953. Lee started writing at a young age but went to UCLA and later UC Davis School of Law to become a lawyer. After practicing law in Silicon Valley for several years, Lee turned to writing professionally, publishing her first young adult novel, Under a Pained Sky, in 2016. One of her most widely read books is The Downstairs Girl, published in 2019. Lee is also the legal director and a founding member for the non-profit We Need Diverse Books, which promotes diversity in children’s and young adult books. Lee lives in San Francisco with her family and continues to write.

While The Downstairs Girl is fictional and not directly based on real people, it does incorporate elements of real history and what life would’ve been like in 1890 Atlanta. After the Civil War ended in 1865, leading to the abolition of slavery throughout the United States, many Southern plantation owners looked to new sources of labor for their fields. For a brief period of time, it was popular to sponsor immigration of Chinese laborers, who, though they were technically free, faced difficult working conditions and discrimination. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that prohibited the immigration of Chinese workers to the United States. It drastically reduced the overall number of Chinese immigrants coming to the country and also prevented many Chinese immigrants who were already in the country from being reunited with their families. All of this explains why Jo, Old Gin, and the other Chinese characters in the story face prejudice and are often isolated from others in their communities. Even after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration remained a controversial issue, with anti-immigrant feelings remaining strong among some Americans. The Downstairs Girl was published at a time when the U.S. government was yet again restricting immigration, and so its historical portrayal of immigration also echoes the present in 2019 when it was published.

Ever since talk-show host Oprah Winfrey founded Oprah’s Book Club in 1996, celebrity book clubs have been a major factor in turning books into bestsellers. In 2017, actress Reese Witherspoon launched Reese’s Book Club, which was based on Oprah’s model, and which soon became an even bigger sales phenomenon in publishing. It jump-started the careers of authors like Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere), Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing), and Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones and the Six). The first Reese’s YA Book Club selection was You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson in 2020, and in 2021, The Downstairs Girl was selected. Author Stacey Lee has also been involved with a recent movement in publishing calling for more diverse books for children (We Need Diverse Books). In addition to advocacy and events, the We Need Diverse Books nonprofit has published books, including the collaborative story anthologies A Universe of Wishes and The Hero Next Door. Other young adult novels featuring Asian American protagonists include Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, George Takei’s graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, and Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian.