dragonwings

[toastykitten]

Hey, I finished it! It was so good. I love Laurence Yep's ability to weave Chinese history and his own made-up fairy tales into his stories. I was a little taken aback by the way he uses the perspective of Moon Shadow to narrate the story, but it does feel true to life. Everything rang pretty true, and I really liked the descriptions of Chinatown life, and the little historical asides, and the way Moon Shadow just adapts to things as they happen. The parts where he gets threatened by Black Dog are genuinely frightening. 

I wish I could read more literary critiques or maybe like someone's retrospective of Yep's career - he is genuinely one of the most successful Asian American authors, and most prolific that I know of, but it seems like a shame that his stuff isn't studied or critiqued alongside Maxine Hong Kingston's.  

Comments

[maeve66]

People basically denigrate young adult fiction. I agree with you about his work deserving much more notice and study. There is at least one (fairly short) autobiography, called The Lost Garden... I think my copy is at work, sigh. Which I haven't been to since March 16th.

My students just turned in their book report! I don't know if I can share it to your LJ email (is there still such a thing? but I will try, along with the Google Slides show I mentioned... the kids chose to use two of my own drawings in their book report, which was cute).