China Boy

By Gus Lee

They could see the writing on the wall: the Communists were winning. As rich Chinese people, they could stay and end up in a re-education camp. Or they could flee. So leaving behind the wealth, status and position they fled, ending up in San Francisco, California. And California was were Kai Ting was born, the only son of his mother and father.
But life in California was so different. For one thing, they were no longer wealthy. Accustomed to lives of wealth and influence, in America, that was no longer the case. Even though the father had a steady job, they could only afford a home in one of the roughest neighborhoods of San Francisco.
Life was hard for Kai. He was the only Chinese boy in his neighborhood. Also, he was small and garbled his words. The local street kids were brutal and he stayed inside with his mom and his sisters where it was safe.
But then his mother died and his father remarried. The stepmother was not a kindly or understanding woman and she was determined to destroy Kai's Chinese culture. She locked him out of the house all day, only letting him inside at night. This left him to the mercy of the cruel street kids and he was constantly being beaten and abused by them. His father was incapable of standing up to his new wife and the best thing he figured out to do was enroll his son in boxing classes at the YMCA.
Kai meets a group of caring and committed men at the YMCA. They see his struggle and they guide him into understanding himself and his place in the community and they give him the tools to stand up to the vicious characters in his neighborhood. The novel ends with Kai facing the worst of them and finally also fighting against his stepmother's abuse.

This is an OK story. There is a huge amount of boxing in the story. Lots and lots of boxing. The only thing that makes all the boxing bearable are the stories about the instructors at the YMCA. But even so, I was getting pretty tired of the boxing towards the last section of the book. Not a fan of boxing, nor reading about boxing. All the boxing sort of ruined it for me. I know, the boxing saved his life.  But if I had known the book had so much boxing in it, I wouldn't have bothered to read it.

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gus-lee/china-boy/.