Synopses & Reviews
The dragon, a symbol of Asian art and mythology, appears in many guises and is always adaptable -- a survivor par excellence. Asian Americans display this same supple strength as they move between their Asian culture and their American one.
In American Dragons, Laurence Yep brings together twenty-five talented writers, each with a different story about the Asian American experience:
- A Chinese American girl struggles to find her place in a suburban high school without denying her true intelligence.
- A young woman is torn when her romantic feelings clash with the expectations of her Vietnamese parents.
- A twenty-first-century teenager and his aging grandfather learn that it is possible to live in the future without losing touch with the past.
Synopsis
Two-time Newbery Honor author Laurence Yep "breaks this collection of poems, stories and one short play into thematic sections—Identity, World War II, In the Shadow of Giants, The Wise Child, Love, and Guides.He includes work from the old and the young, the known (Maxine Hong Kingston and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston) and the unknown. Tibetan Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Thai Americans all speak about fitting in, growing up, and relating to previous generations. An East-meets-West collection that kids will enjoy."—C.
1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 237).
About the Author
Laurence Yep grew up in San Francisco, where he was born. He attended Marquette University, was graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He lives in Pacific Grove, California, with his wife, writer Joanne Ryder. Mr. Yep is one of children's literature's most respected authors and a recipient of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his body of work. His novels include Dragonwings and Dragon's Gate, both Newbery Honor Books. He is also the author of Sweetwater; When the Circus Came to Town; The Imp That Ate My Homework, winner of the Georgia Children's Book Award; The Magic Paintbrush; and The Earth Dragon Awakes. The author of numerous other books for children and young adults, Mr. Yep has taught creative writing and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. In 1990 he received an NEA fellowship in fiction.