Published professionally by the age of eighteen, following high school, Yep moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to attend Marquette University. He began writing while in high school, and one of his teachers challenged him to submit his works to various publications. His father had emigrated from China at age ten in 1910, and his mother had been born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia. Yep spoke no Chinese, being a second-generation Chinese American, which earned him the scorn of many of his Chinese-speaking classmates. His parents, Thomas Gim and Franche Yep, ran a grocery store in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and the young Yep attended a bilingual parochial school whose student body was drawn primarily from San Francisco's large Chinatown area. Yep was born on June 14, 1948, in San Francisco, California. For Yep, as he notes in the preface to these books, the series "represent my version of Chinese America-in its tears and its laughter, its hunger and its fears, and in all its hopes and dreams." Now the author of over sixty books for young readers across several genres, including mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction, Yep is perhaps the most prominent contemporary Asian-American children's writer. Winner of several important awards within the children's literature genre-including a Newbery Honor selection for Dragonwings (1975)-Yep is perhaps best known for his "Golden Mountain Chronicles," an ongoing series which relates the immigrant stories of seven generations of the Young family, from their small Chinese village in Kwangtung in the mid-nineteenth century to their difficult adaptation to their new American home. While this narrative strategy is often recognized as giving a voice to a neglected segment of American society, particularly Asian Americans, Yep's contemplation of what it means to be different often echoes the uncertain identities of a disparate teenage readership, earning his works a large and diverse audience. Often biographical in nature, Yep's works highlight the "outsider" role, capturing the sense of displacement often felt by immigrants and children of immigrants. INTRODUCTIONĪ noted novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, Yep is one of the first Asian-American writers to dedicate himself to bringing the cultural values and historical significance of Chinese Americans into literature for young readers. For further information on his life and career, see CLR, Volumes 3, 17, and 54.
The following entry presents an overview of Yep's career through 2007. (Full name Laurence Michael Yep) American novelist, playwright, editor, autobiographer, and author of folklore, juvenile novels, juvenile short stories, and picture books.
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