I have enjoyed many historical novels by Yep, and this book filled me in on some of the background of those novels. Today as well as writing, he has taught writing and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975. After two years at Marquette University, Yep transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated in 1970 with a B.A. However, it was while attending high school that he started writing for a science fiction magazine, being paid one cent a word for his efforts. During high school he faced the white American culture for the first time. Other students at the school, according to Yep, labeled him a 'dumbbell Chinese' because he spoke only English. They later married and now live in San Francisco.Īlthough not living in Chinatown, Yep commuted to a parochial bilingual school there. Joanne Ryder, a children's book author, and Yep met and became friends during college while she was his editor. He was in his own words his neighborhood's 'all-purpose Asian' and did not feel he had a culture of his own. Growing up in San Francisco, Yep felt alienated. After troubling times during the Depression, he was able to open a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood. Yep's father, Thomas, was born in China and came to America at the age of ten where he lived, not in Chinatown, but with an Irish friend in a white neighborhood.

Franche Lee, her family's youngest child, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family owned a Chinese laundry. Born Jin San Francisco, California, Yep was the son of Thomas Gim Yep and Franche Lee Yep.

Laurence yep chinatown