The End of East – A Novel
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, where she now lives with her husband. Her poetry, fiction, and articles have appeared in a variety of magazines, including The Antigonish Review and The Claremont Review. A finalist for the Stephen Leacock Poetry Contest, she is a Knopf Canada New Face of Fiction for “The End of East”, her first novel.
While examining a copy of her grandfather’s Head Tax certificate, which hangs on the wall of her home office, author Jen Sookfong Lee saw in his photograph a young and vulnerable man. Her grandfather had arrived in Canada at a time when the Head Tax was imposed – ”a tax charged to Chinese immigrants who wanted to enter and stay in the country, while other immigrants were charged nothing. Her grandfather’s haunting photograph, caused her to wonder what life had been like for these Chinese immigrants and inspired her to write her debut novel, The End of East, which spans eighty-five years and explores themes of isolation, immigration, romance and sanity.