The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown Audiobook (Free)

A revelatory background of the trafficking of young Asian girls that flourished in San Francisco during the first hundred years of Chinese language immigration (1848-1943) and an detailed look at the ‘safe and sound home’ that became a refuge for those looking for their freedom

Beginning in 1874, the Occidental Mission House on the advantage of San Francisco’s Chinatown served being a gateway to freedom for a large number of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and young ladies. Run with a courageous band of female abolitionists who about The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown fought the slave trade in Chinese women, it survived earthquakes, open fire, bubonic plague, and assault aimed against its occupants and followers. With compassion and an investigative historian’s sharpened vision, Siler tells the story of both the abolitionists who challenged the corrosive anti-Chinese prejudices of the time and the young ladies who dared to flee their destiny. She relates how the ladies who ran the house defied modern convention–even occasionally breaking the law–by physically rescuing children through the brothels where they worked well or by snatching them off ships as they had been becoming smuggled in–and how they helped bring the exploiters to justice. She also shares the moving stories of many of the girls and youthful women who wanted refuge in the mission, and she writes about the lives they continued to lead. This is a remarkable chapter within an overlooked part of our history, informed with sympathy and vigor.