Summary

“Disappearing Moon Café,” written by Sky Lee, details a family’s accounts and experience. Readers should notice the narrative point, as well as the timeline, varies quite early on in the novel. Each chapter primarily centers a singular person or relatives of and their stories.

The novel begins in 1892 with Gwei Chang on a bone searching expedition sent by the Benevolent Associations. Gwei Chang must find the bones of those who died on the iron road so they can be sent back home. On this expedition, he encounters Kelora, an Indian girl, and her father Chen Gwok Fai. As the two support Gwei Chang’s cause, they help him survive in the new land and help him find the locations of bones. As time goes on, a growing intimacy between Gwei Chang and Kelora arises.

The narrative point then switches to Kae Ying Woo who “has been told that it is important to keep a family strong and together” (page 26). As her time to give birth to a child has come, she feels frustrated that her family disregarded the fact that it was incredibly hard. But as she perseveres through, she gives birth to a baby boy, Robert Man Jook Lee. Her mother then proceeds to tell of her great-grandmother, Lee Mui Lan.

Mui Lan worked at the Disappearing Moon Café. As the readers are first introduced to this character, she is portrayed with a tyrant and somewhat ignorant personality. Her husband, Wong Gwei Chang (as readers have seen earlier), are in bad connection with each other. Mui Lan explains of her in wishes that her son, Wong Choy Fuk, and her daughter in law, Chan Fong Mei, have a child. However, we are given hints of disagreement between Mui Lan and her daughter in law, Chan Fong Mei.

Now, with the help of Kae Ying Woo’s roommate Hermia, they read the letters her grandmother (Chan Fong Mei) wrote, describing her life in Canada.

Chan Fong Mei feels as if she in a hopeless situation, feeling “squashed under her mother-in-law’s thumb” (page 72) her husband and herself do not yet have children. In the midst of her frustration, she takes out some of her anger on her friend, Ting An, also a worker at the café.

Fong Mei thinks about the relationship she has with her husband now that he is sleeping with a waitress working at the cafe. She is quite vicious towards him and his mother in law, but it makes her feel as if she isn’t “Part of somebody else’s plans” (chapter 3, page 123). Fond Mei feels as if it was Mui Lan who set up Choy Fuk and the waitress. On the other hand, Choy Fuk is completely done with all the women in his life. He’s tired of his mother constantly nagging him about having a child and about his critical wife, who doesn’t seem to love him anymore. He had plenty of fun with his mistress, and deeply wants her to have a child. However, it has been six months and she still hasn’t become pregnant. We find out that Ting An is Wong Gwei Chang’s son, but he has believed that he was an orphan ever since his grandfather, Chen Gwok Fei, died when Ting An was twelve. Therefore, he doesn’t know that he has been working for his father for eight years. We also find out that TIng An and Mui Lan had met when he was just a teenager. She treated him like her own long lost son, but when she was done with him, she just “swept him out with the debris” (chapter, page 160). Ting An has a fun night out with Yee Gaw and some intimacy is shown between Ting An and Fong Mei, that wasn’t present in the first and second chapters.

Kae is taking care of her baby. Her mother and her nanny, Seto Chi, come over to visit and help Kae with the baby. Back in 1926, the waitress finally has a baby boy, named Keeman Woo. The baby does not get sent to the Wong family and stays with the mother, even though Keeman may have been Choy Fuk’s son. This is because the waitress’ boyfriend/husband brings up the idea that maybe they should keep him. Fong Mei also gives birth to a baby girl, Beatrice Lee Ying Wong. She wants to keep the baby as far away from Mui Lan as possible. Fong Mei chastises her mother in law to her husband, Choy Fuk, saying “you’re already the laughingstock of Chinatown. Let your slut keep her little bastard! If that old bag (Mui Lan) makes anymore fuss, you’ll both have to answer to Lo Yeh personally. That baby doesn’t belong to her, just like she doesn’t deserve my daughter” (chapter 4, page 182). Fond Mei repeats brutal comments like this one over and over, almost as if she’s shifting the blame away from herself. At this point, we discover Keeman and Beatrice are Kae’s parents. Also at this point in time, “the waitress marries the gambler. Mui Lan got deposed and Choy Fuk kept his mouth shut” (chapter 4, page 183). Back in time again, we find out that Beatrice went to Hong Kong and that Keeman was a soldier in WWII, and he survived. After they both return home, they meet once again and fall in love. They were soon engaged, Fong Mei protested about this, and hit Beatrice. Fong Mei reveals some shocking information to her daugher, that Keeman was Beatrice’s “father’s bastard son!” (chapter 4, page 201). Later, Beatrice runs away from home, but she returns. Keeman goes to his mother to get the truth about his father, but Son An, his mother, was not quite suret who the real father was.

Kae is curious about how things turned out. She talks to her ancestors as though they’re alive; asks them what love was and how it made them feel. Fong Mei is second guessing herself wondering if she should have run away with the man she loved (Ting An) instead of staying with Choy Fuk and the money. Suzie died at 17, also the year Kae was born.

When Suzie admitted who the father was, her mother just walked away and hid in her room. Their grandmother is sick in bed and still urging Bea and Keeman not to be together due to their relationship (brother and sister).With a week gone by, Morgan and Suzie decide to take a ride on their parent’s pontiac. Later, however, Morgan is arrested for taking money and their parents’ car. Prior to this incident, Morgan has been arrested for petty thievery, growing any suspicion towards him.

Fong Mei inquires who her real father is to Suzie. Suzie tells her of Morgan Wong, her father. Fong Mei starts remembering how Ting An told her to marry him and have kids at the time of Choy Fuk’s affair. However, his affair with Fong Mei never lasted long, since Fong Mei decided to not leave her husband, Choy Fuk.

Beatrice’s grandmother is sick and tells of her hopes that Beatrice and Keeman do not marry; she has suspicions that they are brother and sister. Morgan then finds out that Suzie is bearing with his child. Suzie then has a nervous breakdown following the knowledge a doctor passed along that her water has broken. Suzie nearly dies during labour and delivered her baby, but the baby didn’t survive. Beatrice has now become pregnant and tells Keeman that it wasn’t them that were siblings, it was Suzie and Morgan. Mui Lan dies; Suzie is in bed waiting for Keeman and Bea to pick her up for a veterans affair. Suzie is very sick but lies to Bea and tells her that she is healthy. Kae sends a letter to Hermia that she found out Suzie didn’t die from a disease, that she committed suicide. Kae also found out that John, Suzie’s brother, helped her commit suicide by telling her the proper method.

Gwei Chang talks about the Janet Smith murder and witnessed the fight between the whites and the chinese. Gwei Chang felt guilty that he hadn’t told Ting An that he was his father, and felt that he had damaged their father-son relationship in doing so. He felt that if he wasn’t a coward and had enough courage to tell him that they would have gotten along the way Gwei had wanted. People started making rumours of how Janet Smith got murdered. The Janet Smith bill was proposed which meant that chinese men were unable to work near white women. Gwei Chang decided to vote for the boycott, which cost him his best friend Lee Chong, who never forgave him for that. Chinatown had boycotted, and the Janet Smith bill was not passed. Many years later, Lee Chong visits Gwei Chang and forgives him for the boycott incident. Gwei Chang remembers the day that he had to leave Kelora and comes back to find out that she had died. Gwei Chang tells her that he has lost her son and in his death bed, he sees her right before he passes away.