[Download] "Dragons I have Known and Loved (Chinese-American Culture in Fantasy Books) (Essay)" by Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Dragons I have Known and Loved (Chinese-American Culture in Fantasy Books) (Essay)
- Author : Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 78 KB
Description
I FIRST HEARD ABOUT DRAGONS AND OTHER MAGICAL CREATURES FROM MY maternal grandmother. From her, I learned that Chinese dragons were benevolent creatures who brought the rains and helped make crops grow. I grew up in an African American neighborhood of San Francisco, and she lived with us there for several years. Even when she moved to Chinatown, I saw her at least once a week when my mother and I helped her with her shopping. I actually visited her more often because I went to Chinatown every day to attend a Catholic school. As part of its curriculum, the school also offered an hour of instruction in Chinese. Even though we spoke no Chinese at home, my parents felt I could learn it there. As a child who lived in two different ghettos, I could never get into the popular children's literature of the day. Books like Homer Price seemed unrealistic to me because every child had a bicycle. They even seemed foolish because the children left their front door open. No one I knew in my two different ghettos had a bicycle and everyone had at least three locks on their door, so the so-called realistic books seemed like fantasy to me. This was in the fifties when the few books about Asian American children were written by white authors and were no more credible than Homer Price.