China Boy (Magill’s Choice: American Ethnic Writers)
At a glance:
- Author: Gus Lee
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: The early 1950’s
- Setting: San Francisco, California
- Principal Characters: Kai Ting, Dai-li Ting (Mah-mee), Colonel T. K. Ting, Edna McGurk Ting, Tony Barraza, Uncle Shim, Toussaint LaRue
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Mothers, Parents and children, Child abuse, Multiculturalism, Boxing, San Francisco, Bilingualism, Asian Americans, China or Chinese people, Chinese Americans
- Locales: San Francisco, CA
The Novel
China Boy is the story of Kai Ting, the American-born son of a refugee Shanghainese family. Ending an odyssey across both friendly and unfriendly terrain, the Ting family finally settles in San Francisco.
China Boy opens with Kai’s retelling of how his family—including his mother, father, and three elder sisters—fled the civil war in China, and how they came to be situated in San Francisco, specifically in the Panhandle, a tough, largely poor neighborhood. It is in this “concrete crucible” that Kai does his growing up.
The almost...
[The entire page is 2562 words long]
