However, on Moon Shadow’s first night, the laundromat is attacked by what Moon Shadow calls “demons”– white American bigots who throw a brick through the window. Called the Company, they run a laundromat in the Tang Chinese village in San Francisco. When Moon Shadow arrives, he meets the rest of his family abroad, including their leader, Uncle Bright Star, chef White Deer, poet Left, and the boastful Hand Clap. His father, Windrider, eventually sends word for Moon Shadow to come to America and live with him. Moon Shadow enjoys stories his mother tells about his father, a master kite-maker. The year is 1903, and he has never met his father, who has gone to work in America. As Dragonwings begins, seven-year-old Moon Shadow Lee lives on his family farm in China. It was adapted into a play in 1991 by the author, and performed at theaters around California. In 1995, it won the Phoenix Award from the Children’s Literature Association, which recognized it as the best book published twenty years prior that hadn’t won any major awards that year. Dragonwings was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal upon its release, as well as winning an International Reading Association Children’s Book Award. It has been widely praised for its detailed, well-researched depiction of the time period, and is frequently taught in schools as an introduction to this period of American history. The book explores themes of friendship, family, dreams, and the true meaning of home, as well as portraying the Chinese immigrant experience in the early twentieth century. The story is partially based on real events that took place in 1909.

Moon Shadow accompanies a relative to America when he is nine and is reunited with his father, receiving a gift from him: a handmade kite. Dragonwings is set in 1903 and follows the story of a boy named Moon Shadow Lee who grows up in China without his father, who has gone to America to earn money. It is the first installment in the Golden Mountain Chronicles, a ten-novel series continued between 19, which follows the Young family in their journey over several generations, from 1835 to 2011, beginning in China.

Dragonwings is a children’s historical novel by Chinese-American author Laurence Yep, first published in 1975.

The Dragon's Child by Laurence Yep