It was a good thing I came from a strong family, who told me I was to hold my head up and to use my wits to find a way around any obstacle.Įven if we celebrate the few who make it, we must not forget the many whose lives are stunted or whose minds are embittered by their treatment.

The name-calling and insulting gestures and shunning I received were a shock to me. In 1954 when I was a kindergartener in a public school on Long Island in New York, I, alone, integrated my school as the only non-white in the entire building. Immigration laws discriminated against us, keeping immigration from China to 150 persons a year, while those from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany numbered over 104,000. I was one of the few Chinese American children born in the U.S. I talked to Louie about her struggle to put the series into the world, why she felt it was valuable, and what it was like to be an Asian American author during her time.Ĭathy Erway: Were there many other Asian Americans in your school environment? And did this have an effect on you or your work?Īi-Ling Louie: I’d like to start a little farther back than college and show how immigration laws affect the lives of real people. I then was thrilled to discover her more recent biographies for children-books I wish I’d had growing up. When Electric Literature asked Twitter followers to share the first book they’d read by an Asian American author during APA heritage month, I realized my answer was Louie’s Yeh-Shen. It includes biographies on Vera Wang, Yo-Yo Ma and his sister Yeoh-Cheng Ma, astronaut Kalpana Chawla, and most recently, U.S. Between 20, she ultimately self-published the series under her own Dragoneagle Press. Louie switched gears to publish the legend of Yeh-Shen, but remained determined to see her passion project through.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (where she and Vera Wang were the only Chinese Americans in their class of ’71), and Wheelock College, Louie aimed to write children’s books about successful, modern-day Asian Americans, but no publishers were interested. As an Asian American author who came of age during the ‘60s, her trials and tribulations are a sharp contrast to the creative careers of many Asian American artists working today. Like the legend of Yeh-Shen, Ai-Ling Louie’s career has lived in the shadows of children’s book publishing.

Yeh-Shen by Ai-Ling Louie