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The Strength of Water is a haunting Asian American memoir spanning nearly a century that touches on themes of identity, racism, and stereotypes while offering exquisite period details of immigrant life in the U.S. and third-world conditions in China. It is a story of dual identity and life on the margins, revealing the humanity behind the stereotypes of Chinese American laborers, how they lived, and what they felt.

In 1920s Detroit, King Ying stands on a box to iron clothes in her parent’s laundry business and endures taunts of Ching-Ching Chinaman on the playground. She dreams of a home and the elegance of her Jane Arden paper dolls. But when her father incurs steep debts during the Great Depression, he sends her far from hope to live in his ancestral village.

In remote Tai Ting Pong in the Guangdong province of China, King Ying feels as foreign in the land of her heritage as she did in the country of her birth. There, she must survive hunger, deadly superstition, and Japanese invasion. When a guardian angel helps her return to California, it’s a chance to seize her American dream … if she can overcome mid-20th century racism, those who prey on the economically vulnerable, and her family’s expectations about marriage.

In this debut memoir, Karin K. Jensen records her mother’s transpacific quest for identity, survival, and new world dreams.