Currently we are reading different books about culture. I am reading the novel, The Serpent’s Children written by Laurence Yep, born 1948 in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and it displaces some of the culture or the life of the author. Laurence Yep is a child of a Chinese immigrant who came at the age of ten to America. Even if Laurence Yep was born in America all his ancestors came from china and therefore, a lot of his books are about Chinese culture. Especially, his book called, the Serpent’s Children, tells the story of a Chinese clan or village in the 19th century during a time of violence famine and threats of the Manchurian government.

Yep still feels connected to his father’s culture. He also did not visit an American school until High school and never experienced a lot of the American culture in his childhood.
The book, The Serpent’s Children, takes places during the time of the first opium wars and his great grandfather experienced this war. So he has his own relation to that war. This book is the first part of three about the Young family and tells the story of a family over the generations and finally leaving to America. This is basically what happened with Laurence Yep’s family.
Most of Laurence Yep’s books tell the story of an outsider, which tells a lot about his life. Since Yep had different experiences of being an outsider his books are really connected to him. One of his outsider experiences was that he grew up in an African-American neighbourhood. Until High school he wasn’t really an outsider because he just went to Chinese schools, but after that he felt like an “alien”, which he describes in his autobiography.  Laurence Yep was basically an outsider for most of his life and this is also probably the reason why teenagers enjoy reading his books because today a lot of people feel like aliens. Also he started writing his first novel at the age of 23 so he still has the teenager experience not so long ago.