Episode 431: A Father and an Immigrant and a Criminal

FAQ NYC

In the latest episode of LIT NYC, host Katie Honan talks with author Radha Vatsal, a speechwriter at city hall by day, to discuss her new novel about old New York, No. 10 Doyers Street, and “a past that was not as black and white as we make it out to be today.”

Vatsal, an immigrant herself, explains how she came to tell a story of Chinatown in the early 1900s as seen through the eyes of Archana "Archie" Morley, the only woman at her newspaper and one of just a handful of Indian immigrants in New York City at the time. While her editor and husband try to steer her away from covering notorious gangster Sai Wing Duck, AKA Mock Duck, Archie chases down the story of his adopted daughter being taken away from him by the city as it also plans to raze Chinatown.