I check into Booktok regularly where they have been giving high praise to Lotus Shoes (2025) by Jane Yang. And since I’ve been wanting to read a historical novel set in a country and a time period I know very little about, Lotus Shoes seemed like a good fit. And I am pleased to say that Lotus Shoes is definitely worth your time. Remarkably, this is Jane Yang’s debut novel and I predict a really fine writing career ahead.

Lotus Shoes and Golden Lilies are pretty names for the very ugly practice of foot-binding which was visited upon Chinese women and girls for one thousand years and finally outlawed in the 20th century. The novel Lotus Shoes is set in Southern China during the 1800s and revolves around two young women from very different backgrounds.

Little Flower is about six when her mother sells her to the wealthy Fong family. She will be the maidservant to Linjing Fong who is a few years older than Little Flower but really just a child herself caught up in a world she doesn’t understand. Linjing is smart, headstrong and at the beginning a bully to Little Flower.

Linjing is also jealous because Little Flower has bound feet and is an artist when it comes to embroidery. Linjing’s feet were never bound because her father refused to allow it. As Linjing tells us:

“My grandmother slammed her teacup onto the table so hard that it cracked. ‘Do you wish to dishonor our ancestors? Golden lilies are the hallmark of every well-bred girl. No genteel mother-in-law will have a girl with big feet.’”

At first I thought Linjing’s father was a good man who wanted to shield his daughter from the barbaric practice of foot-binding. But in reality he has secured a wealthy, well-connected husband for Linjing who is against foot-binding and wants a more modern China. If the marriage goes through Linjing’s father will be given a prominent political position. So it’s self-interest, not fatherly concern.

And then about a week or two before the wedding a secret is revealed about Linjing’s mother and Linjing is cast out along with Little Flower from the House of Fong. The two women find refuge in the Celibate Sisterhood which was a real organization in China in the 1800s. It was somewhat like a convent where the women who came there pledged celibacy, lived communally with each other, and worked in factories earning money for themselves and their families.

The transition to the Celibate Sisterhood is easier for Little Flower because she is used to hard work and so working in a factory is nothing new.  But Linjing was raised to live the life of a lady and cannot adjust to her new circumstances. 

And when the handsome manager at the factory is stunned by Little Flower’s beautiful embroidery the two become close. Meanwhile Linjing has set her hopes on the handsome factory manager as well. I’ll leave it there except to say that it might seem that readers will be rooting for Little Flower over the spoiled Linjing. But that’s not where Jane Yang leads us.

Wealthy young women crippled for life due to foot-binding did not have it much better than their sisters from poorer families. And once married their lives depended on how their husbands and even more so their mother-in-laws treated them. The matriarch of the House of Fong is monstrous and she has no problem casting out Linjing when scandal erupts that is not even of Linjing’s doing.

I highly recommend Lotus Shoes which will probably be on my list of 10 best books I have read this year.