![]() So (for the sake of these kids) I really try, in every one of my stories, to have some person who doesn’t quite know the milieu. If there was a picture on the wall, I had to be told it was a kitchen god. If there was meat on a plate, I had to be told that it was roast duck and prepared in a special way. With Dragonwings, it’s more than a narrative device when I have the story told from the viewpoint of an eight-year-old boy. It takes me about an hour for four words, specially if it’s Classical Chinese! My parents still speak Chinese at home, but I’m one of those kids who didn’t know the background. I can translate Chinese, but only very painfully. “ Dragonwings was historical fiction but won some awards. (One young critic goes to meet a Picasso-like artist who is very modern and yet somehow manages to link to the energy and vitality of the past, and this young guy is trying to understand how he did that.) I was feeling that way about a lot of experimental fiction, so I started getting back to my roots, which was traditional storytelling.” There’s a story by John Fowles called ‘The Ebony Tower’, in which he talks about art: he feels that artists have moved into a dead end. ![]() I did my dissertation on William Faulkner, so it took me years to learn how to put in commas again! But eventually I realized I didn’t belong in the avant garde. ![]() “I say this despite having studied with John Barth, writing experimental pieces in a seminar. I loved how in three paragraphs Heinlein could create a character you wanted to travel across the galaxy with, and I loved Andre Norton for the worlds she could create – especially worlds on the edge of change. I learned how to write from two science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton. “I must seem like a dinosaur, but I really believe that in storytelling there are things that pull people along a certain path with you. So to me, fantasy and science fiction were much more realistic.” That’s something I did every time I got on and off the bus. Instead I read fantasy and science fiction, because in those books children are taken away from our everyday world, go off to another place where they have to learn strange new customs and even a new language, and they talked about adapting. “At that time, there were a few books about Asian-American children, but they were written by white authors who had maybe done a few interviews – they did not live in Chinatown and did not know the culture. So these so-called realistic books seemed like fantasy to me. Nobody I knew had a bicycle, and everybody had at least three locks on their door. I lived in one ghetto and went to school in another ghetto. In those books every kid had a bicycle, and everyone left their front doors unlocked. The children’s librarians would give me their best book, and it would be something like Homer Price and His Donut Machine. “I grew up in an African-American neighborhood in San Francisco, and went to school in Chinatown. Yep won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association for contributions to children’s literature. He has also written adult SF, including Seademons (1977), and a tie-in novel for Star Trek. He has written numerous standalone novels and picture books, plus non-fiction on various topics, autobiography, plays, and retold Chinese and Chinese-American folktales and legends, notably in The Rainbow People (1989). His latest series, the City Trilogy, began with City of Fire (2009) and continues with City of Ice (2010). The Tiger’s Apprentice series includes The Tiger’s Apprentice (2003), Tiger’s Blood (2005), and Tiger Magic (2006). The Chinatown Mysteries are The Case of the Goblin Pearls (1997), The Case of the Lion Dance (1998), and The Case of the Firecrackers (1999). His Shimmer and Thorn series has Dragon of the Lost Sea (1982), Dragon Steel (1985), Dragon Cauldron (1991), and Dragon War (1992). The Golden Mountain Chronicles include Newbery Honor book Dragonwings (1975), Child of the Owl (1977), Sea Glass (1979), The Serpent’s Children (1984), Mountain Light (1985), Newbery Honor book Dragon’s Gate (1993, AKA The Red Warrior), The Traitor (2003), and Dragon Road (2008). Yep is a hugely prolific writer, penning over 60 books for children and young adults. Yep began publishing professionally with ‘‘The Selchey Kids’’ in If (1968), and first novel Sweetwater appeared in 1973. He met writer and editor Joanna Ryder at Marquette, and they were married in 1984 they live in Pacific Grove CA. He has taught at Foothill College, San Jose City College, the University of California at Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He earned a BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and received a Ph.D. Laurence Yep was born in San Francisco CA, where he lived above his family’s grocery store.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |