Uncle Ng's Laundry House

Ling's first employment when he comes to America is with Uncle Ng, a Chinese American man who owns a laundry business. Ng also runs a small side business with Little Sister's prostitution. The laundry business is quite an operation, with many vessels to wash the laundry in and stacks of clothing everywhere. Ling often craves to leave the laundry and go on errands, which is how he meets Crocker. Little Sister, though, is confined to the laundry house and her courtesan territory and rarely leaves. The laundry house is significant in "The Fortunes" because it becomes a motif for the rest of the novel. In other stories, characters laundry businesses, such as Anna May Wong's father. In the fourth and final part of the novel, when John and Nola visit the orphanage, John sees how the orphan girls fold clothes as part of the orphanage's...