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Summary

Otter, a Chinese boy of wealth and privilege growing up in the 1860s, during the oppression of the Manchu dynasty and the violent opium wars, longs to go to America, to California, the Land of the Golden Mountain. There he can plot with other rebels the Great Work to take back their country.

When a tragic event puts Otter’s life in danger, he is forced to flee to California where he becomes an immigrant laborer digging a tunnel for the Transcontinental Railroad.

  Laurence Yep’s Newbery Honor book Dragon’s Gate is a celebrated coming-of-age story during which a young man enters the harsh crucible of prejudice and finds the strength to pass through the figurative dragon’s gate. I recommend the book for 8 to 12 year olds.

Story Line

Three Willows, a village in the Middle Kingdom, as China was known, is home to fourteen-year-old Otter and his family.  Otter yearns to work alongside his father and his Uncle Foxfire as guests in America where they can secretly plot the Great Work to overthrow the Manchurians, rid the country of the British invaders who introduced opium to their people, and unite their people in peace and harmony. Revered for being guests to America, Otter’s uncle and father bring back tales of wealth, independence, and abundance to their village making Otter long to join them.

Despite his best efforts to convince his mother to let him go to America, Otter’s mother keeps him busy with bookkeeping for their family business. On the day Otter goes to visit the legendary Dragon’s Gate , a place where Chinese myth tells of the small carp fighting the rapids upstream in order to pass through the gate and become a dragon, he becomes involved in an altercation with a drunken Manchurian soldier who accidentally falls on his own knife and dies.

  In order to preserve his life, Otter’s mother realizes she must send her son to America.

Anxious to finally work alongside his father and uncle in California, Otter’s enthusiasm is quickly extinguished as he encounters the startling reality of the Chinese immigrant’s experience. The brutal cold and unfair conditions is shocking to the young boy who grew up privileged.  Stunned by the lack of respect given to his father and uncle, men he’d built up as invincible heroes, Otter becomes filled with disillusionment and disgust.  All around him he sees suffering.

The freedom Otter expected to find in America is not extended to his people.  The Chinese workers are shortchanged on time and supplies; no one is allowed to leave and to show defiance or speak up is to risk being whipped.  Full of bitterness, Otter is desperate to return home and volunteers to take on a risky mission in exchange for his right to leave the mountain. However, the mission will have unexpected and tragic results that will help Otter understand the mythical passing through of the dragon’s gate and the wise words of his Uncle Foxfire who said, “You can learn to change the world or go on being changed by it.”

Awards

1994 Newbery Honor Book

Author Laurence Yep

Born in 1948 in San Francisco, Laurence Yep grew up in a mostly African-American neighborhood, attended a bilingual elementary and middle school in Chinatown and didn’t experience white American culture until he was in high school where he discovered what it felt like to be an outsider. This theme of feeling like an outcast and overcoming barriers is a central theme in many of Yep’s novels.

In 1970, Lawrence Yep graduated from the University of California in Santa Cruz, after beginning his undergraduate education at Marquette University. He went on to earn a doctorate in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

When he he was still in high school, at the urging of a teacher Yep wrote and successfully submitted for publication his first story. Now the author of more than sixty books, Yep has received many honors, including two Newbery Honors (for Dragonwings and Dragon's Gate) and the 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) for his lasting contribution to children’s literature.

(Sources: Scholastic Author Website, American Library Association/Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, HarperCollins- Laurence Yep, Reading Rockets Laurence Yep Interview Transcript)

Golden Mountain Chronicles

Dragon’s Gate is part of a well-known series of books called Golden Mountain Chronicles that follows a Chinese family over several generations from China to the United States covering the years 1835 to 1995. They are presented here in order of fictional history rather than the year Laurence Yep wrote them.

1. The Serpent's Children
2. Mountain Light
3. Dragon's Gate
4. The Traitor
5. Dragonwings
6. Dragon Road
7. Child of the Owl
8. Sea Glass
9. Thief of Hearts
10. Dragons of Silk

My Recommendation

The success of Dragon’s Gate comes not only from its authentic and meticulous timeline of parallel Chinese and American events, but also its complex character portrayal of Otter and the Chinese American experience working on the Transcontinental Railroad. Diligent research of actual events during the 1865-1869 periods both in China and the United States are accurately portrayed in detail right down to the whippings received by the Chinese immigrants who opposed their working conditions.

In addition, Yep’s details of the troubles in China with the oppression of the Manchurian dynasty and the devastating consequences of the opium being sold to the Chinese people helps readers understand Otter’s desire to be part of the Great Work and his fascination with America and its war for freedom.  Although Otter is a proud and privileged young man, his coming of age through experiencing disillusionment and finally understanding, make him a sympathetic, yet admirable literary character.

One of the recurring themes of this story, and throughout many of Yep’s novels, is the bittersweet rite of passage the central character must endure.  These rites of passage involve a sense of disillusionment with the world, a disappointment with circumstances and surroundings, and a point where a character experiences a period of loneliness and must make a crucial decision to either give up or change and carry on. Otter is at that precipice in this story.

When he is beyond enduring the sharp disappointment in his father and uncle, Otter wants to go home. Yet, it isn’t that simple.  Over the course of time, he must learn to see beyond his own social divisions and find unity within his own people. Like the carp fighting the rapids in the beloved Chinese tale, the little fish must fight against monumental rapids in order to pass the date and become a dragon. Otter, too, must fight against enormous obstacles to ultimately find a change of heart.

Dragon’s Gate is a blend of Chinese and American history written with authenticity and unfaltering realism. I highly recommend Dragon’s Gate for ages 8-12. (HarperCollins, 2001. ISBN: 9780064404891) .

More Recommended Award-Winning Historical Fiction, From Elizabeth Kennedy

If your middle grade readers enjoy well-written historical fiction from a variety of time periods, here are some of the books that I recommend: Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page by Richard Platt, with illustrations by Chris Riddell; Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, recipient of the 1944 John Newbery Medal; Across Five Aprilsby Irene Hunt, a 1965 Newbery Honor Book; and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, recipient of the 1977 John Newbery Medal. For my annotated directory of books, see Award-Winning Historical Fiction for Middle Grade Readers.