Laurence Yep
(b. 1948)

Laurence Yep, American-born and of Chinese descent, has written dozens of books, many of which explore his Chinese ancestry and the challenges that Chinese Americans face. His works include historical and realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and folktales.

Laurence Yep was born in San Francisco on June 14, 1948. His father, a Chinese immigrant, owned a small grocery store in the neighborhood where the family lived. Yep found it difficult fitting in with playmates, who regarded him, he says, as the "all-purpose Asian" bad guy who had to die when they played war games.

Yep attended school in San Francisco's Chinatown, yet even there he felt out of place since he spoke no Chinese. As a child he read a lot of comic books, which, he says, prepared him for reading other books such as the Oz series by L. Frank Baum. "In the Oz books, kids are carried away to a faraway place with strange new customs," Yep explains. "They have to adjust to survive." Yep often felt the same way about his own life.

In high school, Yep developed a love of science fiction, which seemed to reflect his own experiences. While a freshman at Marquette University in Wisconsin, he sold his first science-fiction short story. Later he graduated from the University of California, and then earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at the State University of New York in 1975.

While he was still in college, Yep was encouraged by an editor to write a science fiction novel for children. The result was Sweetwater, published in 1973, the story of Earth people who struggle to survive on a distant planet. The book reminded Yep of the struggles that Chinese immigrants underwent to survive in America. He decided to make Chinese American identity the topic of his next novel, Dragonwings.

Published in 1975, Dragonwings is perhaps Yep's most acclaimed work. It required years of painstaking research into his own heritage. "I had grown up as a child in the 1950s, so that my sense of reality was an American one," he says. "Now I had to grow up again, but this time in the 1900s, developing a Chinese sense of reality." His hard work paid off. Dragonwings was named a Newbery Honor Book and won more than a dozen other important awards.

After Dragonwings, Yep continued to write novels –both realistic and historical – about Chinese culture and tradition. Child of the Owl, published in 1977, tells of a Chinese American girl who, like Yep, grew up in San Francisco in the 1960s. "You should always write about what you know," says Yep. "The things you have seen and the things you have thought and, above all, the things you have felt."

Among his most popular historical novels is Dragon's Gate, published in 1993. The story's narrator, Otter, joins his father and uncle, both heroes in their Chinese village, as they travel to America to help build the transcontinental railroad in 1867.

Yep has tackled other genres besides the novel. He retold 20 Chinese folktales in The Rainbow People, and published an autobiography of his childhood in The Lost Garden. In addition, he has written picture books for young readers, children's plays, and novels for adults.

Yep sometimes writes on topics that are unrelated to Chinese themes. His mysteries include The Mark Twain Murders and The Tom Sawyer Fires. He also wrote Shadow Lord, a novel based on the characters from the television show Star Trek.

For three decades, Yep has won praise for his well-developed characters, his portrayals of Chinese American culture, and his themes of individual identity. With each book he writes, he imagines seeing things from a different point of view. "Most of my narratives are first person," he explains. "Whatever character I am, I look through the lens of the self."

To Yep, writing is a multisensory experience. "You should learn to use all your senses when you write," he says. "Don't use just visual information. Use smells and sounds, because that helps make the writing more vivid."

When the California gold rush began in 1849, thousands of Chinese came to America in an effort to improve their lives. After the rush subsided in the mid-1850s, many Chinese remained in California to work. In the 1860s, even more Chinese were hired as laborers to help build the transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869.

By 1870, California's population had soared to half a million, and the next decade brought a depression with high unemployment. Many out-of-work whites blamed their joblessness on the Chinese, who worked for very low wages. As a result, anti-Chinese riots took place in 1871 in Los Angeles, where a mob of thousands killed 20 Chinese men. In 1877, a riot in San Francisco resulted in the burning of many Chinese stores and businesses.

By the time Laurence Yep was growing up in San Francisco, the city had become much friendlier to Chinese Americans. Today, about 30,000 Chinese live in San Francisco's Chinatown area. Filled with shops, restaurants, and other businesses, it is one of the largest Chinese communities outside of Asia. By the year 2000, Chinese Americans accounted for 18 percent of the city's population.

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