Thief of Hearts

Citation: Yep, Lawrence. 1995. Thief of hearts. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN: 0-06-025341-x.

Plot Summary: Stacy has been living in a dream world until she is coupled with a new girl from China, Hong Ch'un. Stacy's world is as American as apple pie, never mind that she is half Chinese and half Caucasian. Stacy has never experienced any type of prejudice, until the new girl is accused of stealing. Of course that is when all prejudices come out from friends who she never thought of her any different. Hong Ch'un runs away from home thinking that anything is better than being with dirty, evil Americans. As Stacy and her family search the streets of Chinatown for Hong Ch'un she learns about her heritage and how different she really is from everyone else. In turn, she learns to love herself and her culture more than she ever imagined.

Critical Analysis: The Thief of Hearts takes place between Alameda and San Francisco (China Town), California. These are two places are comparably night and day. The basis of those differences being that Alameda has hardly any Asians and Chinatown of course does. Stacy becomes torn between her good friends and the new student Hong Ch'un from China. Even though Stacy does not care for Hong she knows that she is not a thief. But since they are both Chinese Stacy's "friends" clump them together. But even in doing that Hong Ch'un does not side with Stacy and really can't stand her for who she is. A "half-breed" who doesn't even speak the language. This speaks volumes to the struggle that children of mixed heritage must endure on a daily basis. This book is important, because too often readers are confronted with the biracial child of white and black, etc. Readers do not often get to experience through literature the plight of a Chinese biracial child. Even though Stacy lives with her great grandmother Tai-Paw, Stacy never embraced her culture because she never had to neither her mother nor her grandmother forced it on her and she felt that she never had a connection anyway. This is until they all had to go search for the runaway Hong Ch'un in Chinatown. During the search Stacy learns a lot about herself and her family and why something's are done certain ways. In the end more light can be shed upon both girl's attitudes and trains of thought. Tai-Paw is the root of the family's culture she is the one who keeps them grounded into the ways of the Chinese. This is true of most cultural heritages. People/children of today do not hold their culture in as much regard as our ancestors and this book shows how we can reconnect if we just pay attention.

Reviews Accessed: From School Library Journal - Yep's sequel to his superb Child of the Owl (HarperCollins, 1977) touches lightly, and with gentle humor, on issues of identity, communication among generations, racial stereotyping, and cross-cultural understanding. Stacy, who lives with her Caucasian father and Chinese mother and great-grandmother in a suburb of San Francisco, tells the story. Her mother, Casey, was the streetwise protagonist of the previous title, and the frail, ancient woman Stacy calls Tai-Paw was the grandmother who gave Casey a home and roots. Stacy has never thought of herself as anything but American-until the day her parents ask her to befriend a Chinese immigrant, Hong Ch'un. The two girls take an instant dislike to one another. When items stolen from people around the school are found in Hong Ch'un's backpack, a schoolmate calls Stacy "half-breed" for defending her. Disgraced, Hong Ch'un runs away, and Stacy, her mother, and Tai-Paw search through Chinatown for her. Their three-generation journey, intertwining memories and revelations with present action, forms the emotional heart of the narrative. From Booklist Stacy has always felt comfortable in her suburban middle school, but when someone calls her a "half-breed," she's shocked into realizing that she's not "just like everyone else" ; she finds herself caught between the worlds of her mixed Chinese and American heritage. The story is set 30 years after Yep's acclaimed Child of the Owl (1977), which was about Stacy's mother and great-grandmother in the 1960s. Now the three women go on a journey back to San Francisco's Chinatown, where Stacy learns about their immigrant past in all its richness and struggle. The characters are well drawn, but the plot is full of contrivances (including a newly arrived Chinese classmate who is suspected of being a thief), and Stacy has an irritating habit of discussing every conversation and incident and family embrace in relation to her search for identity.

Connections: Mohr, Nicholasa. Felita. ISBN: 01413606432. Yep, Lawrence. Sea Glass: Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1970. ISBN: 006441003x. Ta-Chun. Wild Kids - Two Novels About Growing Up. ASIN: b000jzhmv6