This week in school I’m reading a book called The Serpent’s Children by Laurence Yep. He was born on June 14, 1984. He is a Chinese American citizen, and his parents are Chinese too. They moved from Hongkong to San Francisco. He grew up in China Town and went to the International school there. Chinese culture is more important than America culture for him, because his parents grew up in China and he grew up in China Town. So that’s why he said: ”I’m too American to fit in China Town, but I’m too Chinese to fit in every where else.”

Most of his books are about culture, between American culture and Chinese culture

In The Serpent’s Children something happens between two Chinese siblings. I think to be a serpent’s child is actually an insult, but the girl in the book, Cassia, doesn’t think like that, she feels proud of being a serpent’s child because she thinks that the serpent set something for her mind. She is in a family that has famine, drought, and violence, it is almost the same as the war of surviving. Their father is a revolutionary, he is trying to save China from those invaders, so he knows that he is going to find a mountain of gold. And Cassia is trying to use her ability to prove that being called serpent’s children is not an insult. She feels proud of it. She is the serpent’s child.

The Golden Mountain series, of which The Serpent’s Children is one, is about a family which lives with American culture and Chinese culture over a period of 100 years. This is the point: it shows how Chinese culture is important to the author. The series is representing his point of view of the Chinese culture.