Laurence Yep (edit name/settings)

Laurence Yep was born June 14, 1948, in San Francisco, California, the son of Thomas Gim, a postal clerk and Franche Lee, a homemaker. His own identity was a difficult issue because he grew up in a Chinese home in a predominantly black neighborhood where his parents operated a small grocery store; he attended a parochial school in San Francisco's Chinatown. He felt like an outsider at school because he spoke no Chinese like his peers. In Literature for Today's Young Adults, he says of himself, 'I was the all-purpose Asian. When we played war, I was the Japanese who got killed; then when the Korean war came along, I was a North Korean Communist.' He first came face to face with white American culture when he attended high school, where he continued to feel like an outsider. There he discovered science fiction and began writing, publishing his first story at age 18. Many of his books are about young people from multicultural backgrounds. He says that writing has helped him in his own search for cultural identity. Several of Yep's books have received numerous awards. Dragonwings was named one of the New York Times Outstanding Books of the Year (1975), a Newbery Medal Honor Book (1976), a Jane Addams Children's Book Award Honor Book, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book (1976). Child of the Owl was named one of the School Library Journal's Best Books for Spring and one of the New York Times Outstanding Books of the Year (1977). The Rainbow People was named a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book (1989).