Belle Yang and a painting from her first book, Baba: A Return to China
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Belle Yang and a painting from her first book, Baba: A Return to China |
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The act of painting and writing often opens a window to another place and
time. For Belle Yang, they transport her back to the China of her father's
childhood. In two books filled with vibrant stories and fanciful artwork,
Yang has given vivid new life to the country her father remembers.
"I'm fascinated with the old world that's lost," says Yang, 37,
whose father fled China in 1947 during the communist takeover. "I write
to take revenge for my father, for the opportunities he lost to time and
war. But the greater passion is to tell the story of old China, about the
lives of other people--noodle makers, farmers, peasants--those who died
without a voice."
Yang retells their stories in Baba: A Return
to China Upon My Father's Shoulders (1994) and The Odyssey
of a Manchurian (1996). She is working on the final
book in the trilogy, "On Old Granddaddy Hill," which will offer
readers a deeper look into old China through the eyes of Yang's great-grandfather.
The two published books have received critical praise. The Los
Angeles Times, for example,
called her first book "a captivating memoir ... lavishly
illustrated and lovingly narrated." Author Amy Tan, in an introduction
to Baba, said Yang "has created a
world we can lose ourselves in, and
when we emerge we are all the better for it."
In Baba ("father" in Chinese), Yang animates
the characters of
her father's boyhood in stories that depict everyday life in the shadow
of the Japanese occupation, the Russian onslaught, and the Chinese civil
war. In the second book, she describes her father's 3,000-mile journey on
foot across China to flee the approach of communist forces.
Both books are illustrated with Yang's own whimsical block prints and watercolor
paintings: colorful, animated works described by one critic as "sparkling."
Yang was a UC Santa Cruz biology major when she took her first step toward
writing the Baba books. During a year spent in Scotland in the Education
Abroad Program, Yang toured many of the great museums of Europe and realized
that art--not science--was her true love.
After returning to UCSC to complete work on her bachelor's degree, Yang
studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and at the Academy
of Traditional Chinese Painting in Beijing.
In Beijing, Yang embraced her Chinese heritage. After returning to California
in 1989, she yearned to hear her father's stories about his childhood--stories
she had been unwilling to listen to during her own.
"When I was growing up, I wasn't ready to listen, I didn't want to
hear, I didn't want to be Chinese," says Yang. "When I came back
from China I was 30 and had made enough mistakes to be sympathetic to my
own parents. I had absorbed enough of the Chinese symbols, the imagery.
I had eaten food grown on the Chinese soil. I had become Chinese."
Ironically, writing about her father's past has made Yang feel more a part
of her adopted country. "People say 'go out and vote' because that's
how you participate in America, but there are other ways, too," says
Yang, whose parents lived in Taiwan and Japan before immigrating to America
when she was seven years old.
"I feel that by writing I'm participating in a democracy. I'm saying
something that may change someone's viewpoint; giving my voice to my father--to
a whole lot of others--and through that process becoming
more American myself."
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