About this item
As GOTY 2014 rehearses her ballet routine for The Nutcracker, she wonders if she'll ever master her pirouettes, especially with her classmate Renata pointing out her every mistake. She tries focusing on the other parts of the production she enjoys: exploring the costume and props room and helping out with costumes for some of the younger dancers. But when Jade, her big sister who also attends Anna Hart School of the Arts, becomes moody and withdrawn, GOTY 2014 taps into her design skills to try to find a solution for Jade. In the meantime, can GOTY 2014 find the confidence to tune out Renata and perfect her own performance, too?
About the Author
Born June 14, 1948 in San Francisco, California, Yep was the son of Thomas Gim Yep and Franche Lee Yep. Franche Lee, her family's youngest child, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family owned a Chinese laundry. Yep's father, Thomas, was born in China and came to America at the age of ten where he lived, not in Chinatown, but with an Irish friend in a white neighborhood. After troubling times during the Depression, he was able to open a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood. Growing up in San Francisco, Yep felt alienated. He was in his own words his neighborhood's "all-purpose Asian" and did not feel he had a culture of his own. Joanne Ryder, a children's book author, and Yep met and became friends during college while she was his editor. They later married and now live in San Francisco. Although not living in Chinatown, Yep commuted to a parochial bilingual school there. Other students at the school, according to Yep, labeled him a "dumbbell Chinese" because he spoke only English. During high school he faced the white American culture for the first time. However, it was while attending high school that he started writing for a science fiction magazine, being paid one cent a word for his efforts. After two years at Marquette University, Yep transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated in 1970 with a B.A. He continued on to earn a Ph. D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975. Today as well as writing, he has taught writing and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara.
