During high school he faced the white American culture for the first time. Other students at the school, according to Yep, labeled him a "dumbbell Chinese" because he spoke only English. They later married and now live in San Francisco.Īlthough not living in Chinatown, Yep commuted to a parochial bilingual school there. Joanne Ryder, a children's book author, and Yep met and became friends during college while she was his editor. He was in his own words his neighborhood's "all-purpose Asian" and did not feel he had a culture of his own.
Growing up in San Francisco, Yep felt alienated. After troubling times during the Depression, he was able to open a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood.
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. Franche Lee, her family's youngest child, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family owned a Chinese laundry. Born Jin San Francisco, California, Yep was the son of Thomas Gim Yep and Franche Lee Yep.
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