Color faultlines in 1940s San Francisco

Amy Chua is famous for Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a sort of memoir, as well as recommendations for bringing up children. She is a legal scholar and has written two other books, World on Fire, about ethnic hatred resulting from free market democracy – which was not a bad read actually; whether or not one agrees with the arguments, they are well researched and nicely argued – and Political Tribes, which I have not read but it is said to be about American foreign policy. This novel, The Golden Gate, is Chua’s debut in fiction writing.

The Golden Gate is a whodunnit. It is, of course, located in San Francisco. Chua is a consummate teacher and cannot resist inserting short history lessons – such as on the building of the Golden Gate bridge, or California geology and the forming of the Sierra Nevada, or fur hunters – throughout the book, but these are short, relevant, and interesting, and so, not a nuisance at all, even if it is definitely not essential parts of the narrative.

Our protagonist is Al Sullivan, a detective police who was having a drink at the Claremont hotel when a famous guest, said to be possibly the next American president, Walter Wilkinson, is murdered in that hotel. The conditions of the crime are a little bizarre, and suspicion is immediately focused on the 3 Bainbridge girls. The Bainbridge family are a rich, old family who live on Nob hill, with a matriarch, Mrs Genevieve Bainbridge, and her three granddaughters, the famous Bainbridge girls, Nicole, Isabella, and Cassie. The action is set in 1944, but the novel oscillates between this time period and 1930, because what took place at that time clearly has had some relevance to the 1944 murder. In 1930, 6 year old Isabella had an older sister, Iris, who died of a broken neck in what was considered a terrible accident, but of course, it may have been a murder which was never investigated. There is also a ‘Chinese’ angle, with Madam Chiang Kai Shek living as the Bainbridges’ neighbours and supposedly Walter Wilkinson’s lover. Inevitably, Chinese tongs are also included in the plot, and there is a second murder or a Chinese woman linked to the Chiang household.

While the whodunnit plotting is not particularly deft – it is Chua’s first go at this, and it comes across not as unfolding naturally and inevitably as the best whodunnits are, but a little contrived, and in fits and starts – the novel contains very nice musings on race and class. Al Sullivan for instance, was Alejo Gutierrez, son of a Mexican father from Guadalajara, and a white Irish Catholic mother, and who can pass as white, as well as speak Spanish with a Mexican accent, and uses both to pass when he needs to. When his father had to leave America, he insisted his wife and relatively white son stay behind, though he took his other, more Mexican-looking son with him,

He said if Mom tried to follow him to Mexico, I couldn’t let her. She was white, which was gold in Merica, so she had to take advantage of that, and the same with me since I could pass for white” (p144).

There is of unsurprisingly, given Chua’s own interests, quite a bit of material on the relationship between Americans and the Chinese, and explanations of who American was going to back, Chiang Kai Shek or Mao Tse-tung, and why, but there is also musings on class in America, given how Al Sulivan is a self made man, and is fully aware he is dealing with what amounts to the area’s aristocracy, the Bainbridges, how their status and wealth renders them more untouchable than most. There is also a nice inclusion of political tensions between landed gentry and working classes, with Nicole Bainbridge being politically minded and self-declaredly a Communist, outraged at the treatment of the working classes (such as longshoremen and dockhands), taking part in protests, etc. 

The race and class and political issues are nicely presented, and are the best parts of the book really, showing how these faultlines come together in San Francisco where people have to coexist and rub up against each others’ angsts and communities. Sometimes, colour and race are superceded by wealth and class:

It’s funny how whites in America don’t see Greeks as white” (p231)

There is a complex pecking order, hierarchies of all sorts, unspoken but well understood by all. Al Sullivan’s musings are especially pertinent:

I’d also lost a parent as a kid, and for a while after they took my dad away, I was angry with at every white person I met. Which made no sense because my mum was white and most people thought I was white. But I never felt totally white. Of course I wasn’t really Mexican either I didn’t fit in anywhere. […] He helped me go from Alejo Gutierrez to Al Sullivan, and life got a lot better. I don’t know what they says about this country. Or about me. Sometimes I feel guilty – sometimes worse than guilty. But then I tell myself it’s not me, it’s America” (p232).

Al Sullivan’s chief, Greening, does not permit him to question the Bainbridge girls, but then conveniently, District Attorney Doogan, tells Al to report to him directly, bypassing Greening. As explanation for this happy state of affairs, Chua makes it out that Doogan

had a massive chip on his shoulder – from being Irish, Catholic, and middle class, from not getting invited to high society dinner and cocktail parties – which gave him a healthy dose of motivating bitterness. I knew how he felt: he wanted to take down and stick it to everyone who’d ever slighted him. And he had a running list that went on for pages” (p211-2)

Although he attended Harvard Law school, his dad sold air conditioners. So it isn’t clear why he’s have a chip on his shoulder or imagine he should be invited to high society cocktail parties. Doogan seems less interested in who is actually guilty, than in working out his biases in his job role. He explains that the law is also biased:

Everything changes, Sullivan, once you’ve got a different color defendant in the box” (p250)

Sullivan also explains that there no warrant is ever needed to search a poor man’s house or a house in the workingman’s part of town, whereas with the rich, a warrant is sought because

You’d better dot your i’s and cross your t’s, because otherwise the rich man and his lawyers would call the boss and get your ass fired the next day […] one rule for the poor, another for the rich” (p294).

Towards the latter part of the book, the angle about Japanese being interred in camps is suddenly played up. The book needs to weave together its various themes more seamlessly, as well as drive its plotline more skilfully. All that said, it is a easy and fun read, with some nice considerations of class and race thrown into the mix. Most of the characters are stooges and props, which is not unusual for whodunnits, but there is a bit role for Miriam, Al Sullivan’s niece, who is only eleven but seems at least 21, and who is very charming, but alas, that story goes nowhere and has very little relevance to the plotline. So a book which needs much more and better, tighter editing and plotting, but not a bad debut fiction/whodunnit.

[For a different take on this book, see Susan’s review]

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