Artistic Representation Of Lost History

Today Laurence Michael Yep is best known as a premier Asian American writer. Dragonwings is his second novel and it's for children and probably still the best one for which he is known. The story is set in San Francisco in the early 1900s. A Chinese boy, Moon Shadow, sailed across the Pacific Ocean to join his father, Windrider, to make a living for their family back home in Canton, China, and to help his father to build a flying machine, Dragonwings, which later was flown into the sky. hi the novel, Yep gracefully weaves history into the plot and presents a vivid picture of the Chinese immigrants' life in the opening years of the 20th century. The New York Times called it, "an exquisite poem of Chinese courage and ingenuity.. .a success." The success of Dragonwings lies in Yep's masterful use of various fictional devices, but, more important, in that the novel reclaims the once lost history of the United States as a multiethnic nation-the history of how the first generation Chinese immigrants worked through hardship.Appealing to the historical approach, this dissertation intends to explore how the novel manages to represent that part of American history in the form of historical fiction and thus reclaim the lost history in regard to narrative perspective, characterization, setting, narrative thread and historical facts. This dissertation is divided into four chapters: Chapter One: Introduction. This chapter presents a brief introduction of the author's family background, life career and the novel's background, creative origin, genre and position and current research status. Chapter Two: Dragonwings, a Historical Novel for Young Adults. This chapter mainly analyzes and defines the literary genre of the novel Dragonwings by looking at the features of young adult literature and historical fiction. Chapter Three: Dragonwings, an Artistic Representation of Lost History.This chapter explores how the novel manages to present an artistic representation of the lost history by way of narrative perspective, characterization, setting, narrative thread and historical facts. Chapter Four: Conclusion. This chapter summarizes the argumentation of this dissertation in terms of its successful manipulation of fictional devices and the significance of such an artistic representation of the lost history.