Reinscribing (Asian) American History in Laurence Yep's Dragonwings

Abstract

Creatively (re)interpreting history is essential to the Asian American process of validation and self-representation. Historical novels by Asian American writers introduce messages of empowerment for children while paralleling the operation of their own culture within American history. This essay examines Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings (1975) as emblematic of the strategies Asian American writers use to engage stories of Asians in the United States As Asian Americans write stories about their history they illuminate an often concealed past; through these stories they are doing justice to Asian American history and the overarching American history.

Literature functions as an effective way for children to learn about diversity within and among cultures and to gain a sense of their country's ethnic history and constitution. The growing field of children's literature focusing on ethnicity and culture presents issues of heritage as they intersect with contemporary life and myth adapted to Western circumstances. Many of the themes that are dealt with in adult literature—such as identity, the meaning of home, interpersonal relationships—appear in children's literature with a didactic purpose. This area has become a "particularly intense site of ideological and political contest, for various groups of adults struggle over which versions of ethnic identity will become institutionalized in school, home, and library settings" (K. C. Smith 3). Focusing specifically on Asian American children's literature and tracing its evolution since the 1970s, one comprehends the way that literature functions as a cultural product that both reflects and shapes the cultures of those who live it—and the way that "consumers," or beneficiaries, can play a role in the production of culture and its literary artifacts (Carpenter 53). Asian American writers for children are deploying increasingly creative strategies for negotiating the varied strands of culture that children experience. Their creations—including historical fiction, picture books, autobiographies, novels, poetry, and bilingual texts—strive to balance appreciation for heritage with attention to the renewed cultural realities their audiences may be experiencing.

Children's texts are culturally formative and of tremendous importance educationally, intellectually, and socially. Perhaps more than other forms of literature, they reflect society as it wishes to be, as it wishes to be seen, and as it unconsciously reveals itself to be. Consequently, ethnic children's literature highlights the meaning or values that society places on questions and attitudes about ethnic differences and intercultural relationships. It reflects how each group occupies or moves within certain areas or exerts specific influence on the place they are in and the community they form. Rudine Sims classifies this category of children's writing as "culturally conscious books" (478)—that is, stories told from the point of view of the ethnic character, and dealing with a concrete ethnic family or neighborhood, focusing on both heritage and contemporary living. The themes generally dealt with include those common in all realistic children's fiction: everyday experiences, urban living, friendships, family relationships, and stories about growing up (480-81). Furthermore, as Ivy Chan argues, in developing multicultural literature for children, one of the goals must be to foster in the child a multicultural perspective—an international outlook and the realization that people express many of the same feelings and needs in varied ways; the emphasis should be on what people share—the "similarity in differences"—rather than what separates (23). The evolution is toward writing that resonates with the realities of actual childhood situations, specifically intercultural works that emphasize the varied cultural influences a child growing up in the United States experiences, rather than on solely appreciating and/or acquiring a heritage identity. As Katharine Capshaw Smith explains, "Children's literature allows readers a means to reconceptualize their relationship to ethnic and national identities. Telling stories to a young audience becomes a conduit for social and political revolution" (3). In contemporary American society, ethnic literature for children tends to highlight ways of affirming and celebrating difference as they simultaneously seek ways to cooperate and collaborate across ethnic boundaries.

For the children of minority groups in the United States today, the issue of how to integrate the past with...