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Overview
Young Laurence didn't really where he fit in. He thought of himself as American, especially since he didn't speak Chinese and couldn't understand his grandmother, who lived in Chinatown. But others saw him as different in the conformist American of the 1950s. In this engaging memoir, the two-time Newbery Honor author tells how writing helped him start to solve the puzzle.
The author describes how he grew up as a Chinese American in San Francisco and how he came to use his writing to celebrate his family and his ethnic heritage.
Synopsis
Young Laurence didn't really where he fit in. He thought of himself as American, especially since he didn't speak Chinese and couldn't understand his grandmother, who lived in Chinatown. But others saw him as different in the conformist American of the 1950s. In this engaging memoir, the two-time Newbery Honor author tells how writing helped him start to solve the puzzle.
Publishers Weekly
In this somewhat desultory but affecting autobiography, Yep ( Dragonwings ) describes himself as a collection of disparate puzzle pieces: a Chinese-American raised in a black neighborhood, a child too American to fit into Chinatown and too Chinese to fit in anywhere else. Writing, he explains, has conferred on him the role of puzzle-solver, allowing him imaginatively to join and even reinvent the pieces. Among the most notable figures in Yep's unassuming narrative are his hardworking, indomitable parents, owners of a grocery that requires their unflagging attention, and his Chinatown grandmother, the model for several characters in his novels. Occasional flashes of humor or whimsy--an eccentric chemistry teacher's antics, the revelation that Yep wrote his Mark Twain books to the music of the B-52s--enliven the mix. Ages 11-13. (May)