Laurence Yep Notable Asi

commissions. With her assistance in the personnel office, Clinton appointed many Asian Americans to government positions during his first year in office. He named Doris Matsui, wife of U.S. House representative Robert Matsui, as the deputy assistant of the president for public liaison. Maria Haley, a Filipino American, was appointed deputy director for personnel of Clinton's transition (earn. Clin- ton named Barbara Chow as a special assistant of domestic policy, Shirley Sagawa as a special assistant of legislative affairs, and Brant Lee as a special assistant in the Office of the Staff Secretary. In addition, Clinton offered the posi- tion of secretary of transportation to House representative Norman Mineta, but he declined. After the appointments were completed, Yee wrote in the Hoiiston Chronicle that, "It is important to note that despite the Asian American appointments made by former President Bush, he never made an offer to, nor had an Asian Pacific-American in his Cabinet." In March 1993 Clinton asked Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown to study the effects of Clinton's economic pol- icies on the economic problems of California. Yee was appointed Northern California liaison. Her job was to coordinate the interagency task force with business, com- munity, and labor leaders in designing a plan to stimulate economic growth in the region. In May of 1993 she was appointed special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce and senior adviser on the Pacific Rim. executive director of the Organization of Chinese Ameri- Yee is a founding member of the National Network cans (OCA), a national, nonpartisan advocacy organiza- Against Anti-Asian Violence. She is also founding member tion headquartered in Washington, D.C. There she was of the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership, exposed to civil rights, human rights, and other issues concerning the Asian community in the United States. Americans to enter public service. Yee also testified extensively before Congress on pro-fam- ily immigration policies. Departn •nt of Coi :e. "Melir After leaving the OCA in 1990, Yee served as the director , 1994. of constituencies for the Democratic National Committee. She also began working for the Democratic party in prepa- —Sketch by Douglas Wu ration for the 1992 presidential elections. In 1991 she coordinated the first national Asian Pacific American Democratic Summit, and in 1992 she organized the politi- cal program and gala reception for the Democratic National Convention. During the 1992 Clinton/Gore cam- paign, Yee was named national director of Asian Pacific American Political Affairs. She organized many political and fund raising events across the country and designed Laurence Yep programs to maximize voter participation in the election. (1948-) Yee also served as the chief adviser to President Clinton on issues that impacted the Asian Pacific Community. Writer

Political Appointee .Laurence Yep is a multi-faceted writer. His best-known After Clinton won the election, Yee was appointed spe- works include two children's books, Dragonwings and cial assistant in the Office of Presidential Personnel in the Dragon's Gait, both of which were named Newbery Honor White House. In this capacity she processed thousands of books. His audiences include children and adults of all applications and made personnel recommendations for ages. Although he is best known as a science fiction writer, White House appointments to agencies, boards, and he doesn't limit himself to one genre. He has written Notable Asian Am mythology and historical fiction, picture books and short stories, novellas as well as full-length novels. And, in the last ten years, Yep has added play writing to his growing repertoire.

Born in San Francisco, California, on June 14, 1948, Laurence Yep was named by his then-ten-year-old brother who later admitted that, being unsure about gaining a sib- ling, he had named his younger brother after a saint who had died an especially brutal death.

A diird-generation Chinese American, Yep lived in an apartment above his parents' grocery store in the Western Edition District, a predominantly black neighborhood of San Francisco. He rode the bus into Chinatown for school, he told Terry Hong in an interview. "Going back and forth between those two ghetto areas is why I got interested science fiction," he explained. "In the 1950s when I was growing up, there were no books on being Chi- nese American. And I couldn't identify widi the standard children's books because in all of them, the kids lived in houses where the front door was always unlocked and they all had bikes. I didn't know anyone like that. 1 really liked science fiction because kids from the everyday world were taken to another world, and had to learn another lan- guage, another culture. Science fiction was about adapt- Laurence Yep ing and that's what I was doing every time I got off the bus traveling between my two worlds."

The Writer and the Academic my first novel, Sweetwater, was published in 1973. I didn't High school brought new changes to Yep's life. "That realize it at the time, but the aliens in the book are based was the first time I was around so many whites," he on the bachelor society in Chinatown," explained Yep, recalled about the preparatory school run by Jesuits. "It referring to the large numbers of unmarried Chinese was also in high school that I got involved with writing for immigrant men who were unable to marry because misce- the first time. I was going to be a chemist which is what my genation (intermarriage) was illegal and strict Chinese father wanted to be before he had to drop out of college anti-immigration laws barred Chinese women from enter- during the Depression. In my senior year, I had an English ing the United States. These Chinese men, these "aliens," teacher who told me that if I wanted an A in the course, I were therefore forced into lives of lonely bachelorhood.

I started sending in stories, and started getting rejections. Yep would also realize later that as he wrote his first-per- The teacher eventually retracted the demand, but I had son narratives about strangers and aliens from a faraway already gotten into the habit of sending in my stories." world facing a totally foreign culture, he was actually exploring his own feelings of being caught between his two worlds, China and America. "I look at the stories that I At age eighteen, as a freshman at Marquette University published during those years and they're all about either in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Yep had his first story accepted alienated heroes or science fiction aliens. That sense of by Worlds of If, a science fiction magazine no longer in isolation and not belonging is still predominant in my publication. "A few years later, the story was anthologized writing today—in stories about outsiders and survivors. in The World's Best Science Fiction of 1969," said Yep. He did And, I think that's a theme that really appeals to both chil- not last long away from California and quickly returned dren and adults today. For example, the very pace of tech- home. "I couldn't stand the winters out there," he chuck- nology in our society tends to alienate us from society and led. In 1970, Yep graduated from the University of Califor- from one another." nia at Santa Cruz (UCSC) with a degree in literature. He continued to write and publish science fiction, both short As Yep continued his fiction writing, he earned his stories and novellas, while pursuing his academic degree. Ph.D. in English literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. "Other English departments used to "A friend of mine had gone to work for Harper and call it 'the Buffalo zoo' because any new theory of litera- Row [now HarperCollins] in the children's section and ture was on display there," Yep recalled with a laugh. Not Laure: eYep Notable Asian American^ surprisingly, his dissertation topic also explored the alien- In addition to his family's memories, Yep has also relied ated, isolated hero—Psycholinguists Strategies of William on his Chinese heritage for such works as the 1989 award- Faulkner's Early Heroes was Yep's academic version of a winning The Rainbow People, which features twenty folk familiar theme. tales told by Chinese immigrants and retold by Yep. Two years later, he followed the work with Tongues of Jade, which contains an additional seventeen tales. In the same year that Yep finished his doctorate, he published Dragonwings. The 1975 young adult novel told die story of an actual Chinese American aviator who built Yep also uses his writing to preserve and celebrate Asian and flew a flying machine in 1909. Dragonwings enjoyed American literary traditions. In 1993, he edited and pub- wide success; in addition to being chosen a 1976 Newbery lished the award-winning American Dragons, a compilation of stories, poems and essays by twenty-five noted Asian 1976 IRA Children's Book Award, Notable Children's American authors, including Maxinc Hong Kingston, Books of 1971-1975, the Best of Children's books for Toshio Mori, and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. 1966-1978, and the 1976 Carter G. Woodson Award. In promotional material for Dragonwings, a 1975 review from The Writer i Teacher the New York Times Book Hevieiu is quoted: " [Dragonwings is] an exquisitely written poem of praise to the Chinese As Yep continued to publish and grow as an author, he eventually began to teach creative writing, first as a part- time instructor at San Francisco Bay Area junior colleges Choosing the Writer and later at the University of California at Berkeley. "Writ- ing is definitely a craft that you can teach someone," From Buffalo, Yep returned to California with the inten- insisted Yep. "It's like building a well-made cabinet. I saw a tion of teaching. However, due to a broad cut in state edu- hunger in many students who were going to be computer cational funds, teaching jobs became extremely scarce. programmers and physicists and scientists—a real hunger -So I decided to concentrate on writing," he said. With to express themselves. That's the part of teaching that I years of academic literary training behind him, Yep enjoy most. I especially enjoy the interaction—arguing returned to basic storytelling ski!is in his writing. "Instead with students who are so passionate about things, for of just telling the story, I had been taught to be very aware whom everything is so black and white." of the act of storywriting . . . layers of narrative, etc. It took me awhile to get back to just basic storytelling." Ten years ago, due to time restraints, Yep stopped teach- ing when he began writing plays. "I was part of a play writ- Although Yep often writes of alien worlds and futuristic ing experiment which brought together three science landscapes, he ironically draws much of his material from fiction writers and three playwrights to create a science fic- his own experiences. The impetus for writing a work like tion stage work that did not require special effects. I was Stueetwater, about the first colonists sent from Earth to the one of the science fiction writers," he recalled. "Writing star Harmony, is the same for such historical works as for the theatre was a real revelation to me. I can't watch Dragon's Gate, a story of immigration and the construction someone reading my books, but I can watch an audience of the transcontinental railroad during the mid-1800s. watching my plays." "When I write a Chinese piece that I haven't completely explored, I begin by first writing science fiction. I use the One of Yep's most successful play writing endeavors was the adaptation of his novel, Dragonwings, for the stage. A explore the psychology and dynamics of a potential sub- collaborative effort between Yep and Asian American ject before I actually write it," Yep explained. director Phyllis S.K. Look, Dragonwings was produced in such notewordiy venues as New York's Lincoln Center and Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center. "It was most Yep's own family stories, too, are a special source of interesting to meet a certain group of actors who ended inspiration for his writing. "My father never talked about up doing about three hundred performances of the show. his own growing up, so I grew up with die stories my They knew the characters much better tiian even I did. mother and grandmother shared with me about West Vir- Toward the end of rehearsals, the actors even began to ginia. Those stories were so close to me, that I consider talk about the characters as 'I,' as if all the lines between West Virginia, not necessarily China, my homeland. My their real selves and their characters had blurred and even disappeared." pletely accepted there. I heard stories about searching for Indian arrowheads in the creek, about sledding in the win- ter, and about how my grandmodier's apple pies were Currendy, Yep is at work on a number of projects, always the first to sell out at the church socials." Those including two children's works, Dream Soul and Thief of inherited memories were memorialized in Yep's 1991 Hearts, both sequels to The Star Fisher and Child of the Owl, novel, The Star Fisher. respectively. He is also at work on picture books based o Shirley Young (1935- ) Businessperson

ket development with General Motors Corporation, a post she has held since June 1, 1988. General Motors (GM) hired Young in hopes that her expertise as a strategic mar- keting planner would help regain its share of the domestic auto market, which had been sliding throughout the 1980s as the giant automaker retooled and reshaped its management to more effectively compete with the bur- geoning import market. Prior to her work at GM, Young worked for more than twenty-five years at the New York- based Grey Advertising, where she had held a variety of positions, including executive vice-president and a mem- ber of the Agency Policy Council, before being named president of Grey Strategic Marketing in 1983.

Shirley Young was born in Shanghai, China, on May Shirley Young 25, 1935. Her father was a career diplomat with the Nationalist Chinese government then in power. This was a tumultuous time for China. Japan had been occupying Chinese folk tales, as well as an adult novel derived from Manchuria for some lime and was fighting the Chinese one of his one-act plays, Fairy Bones. "This one's an on- government for control of the huge country. In 1942 her going project," he added specifically. "It's a real labor of father was stationed in the Philippines, a country Japan love. It might be another twenty years before I actually fin- had also invaded, and as a representative of the govern- ished this one." ment of China, Young's father was executed by the Japa- nese. Following the war, Young and the remainder of her family fled to the United States where she has lived Amidst writing the seemingly endless short stories, nov- els, and plays about real and imagined people, places, and events, Yep professes that he does not have a preference Young was educated at Wellesley College in Massachu- for a certain kind of writing. "Every one of the different setts, from which she graduated in 1955 with a bachelor's styles brings new interesting challenges," he said and degree in economics. After graduation, her first job was as paused, before continuing, "I think doing plays, though, is a project director with the Alfred Politz Research Organi- the most challenging because by now, I know whether a zation, where she worked for three years before joining written story is good or not by the time I've finished writ- the Hudson Paper Corporation as a market research man- ing it. But with a play, I don't know until I've actually gone ager. In 1959, she was hired as a researcher by the presti- into the theatre with the actors and heard the lines. And gious Madison Avenue agency, Grey Advertising. it's a strange sensation sharing my fantasy with a dozen It was in her first position at Grey that she helped pio- neer what is referred to in the advertising field as attitudi- nal studies. As described in a Business Week profile of Young, "her metiiod, Market Target Buying Incentive Studies, helps packaged goods companies such as Proctor HarperCollins, promotional material for Dragonwings, & Gamble Company and General Foods Corporation April 1994. understand how consumers go from thinking about a product to actually buying it." Young continued her mar- Yep, Lawrence, telephone interview with Terry Hong, ket research at Grey, assuming various marketing posi- August 1,1994. tions before being named executive vice-president. In 1983 she became president of Grey Strategic Marketing; —Sketch by Terry Hong five years later she was elevated to chairperson.