The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism.

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk is a historical novel that explores the importance of remembering and understanding history. The sleeve is the unifying object that connects Inara, Daniel, and the other present-day characters to their shared ancestral past. Over the course of the novel, just as Inara discovers her family’s part in historical racism, Daniel and his family discover threads of meaning that connect them to their Chinese American ancestral history. The value of that history is significant, changing the way they each view themselves and one another.

The sleeve is the primary vehicle for the discovery of Mei Lien’s existence and the challenges of her life: “The sleeve knew something. It knew something about Mei Lien’s life that Inara had yet to discover, and it had something to do with Rothesay. Which meant it had to do with her family and herself” (124). Inara knows the sleeve isn’t simply an artifact of history—it represents the story of another individual human being. Inara’s discovery of the sleeve leads to the pursuit of its origin, which in turn leads her to Daniel and her investigation into her family’s company.