Yin, illustrated by Chris Soenpiet,
Coolies.
Philomel Books (Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers), 2001

Visual documents hide the Chinese railroad workers who survived the brutal 12-hour and more backbreaking days an often freezing nights. Yin describes many of these hardships using two time-shifts pages of a paw paw (grandmother) telling the story of her bok gong (great grandfather) to her own grandchild.

Yin carries on the traditions of Laurence Yep, the Chinese American doyen storyteller for children. While Yep fashions whole stories from historical vignettes, Yin is more panoramic, covering the immigration of two brothers from China to the United States, their trials and adventures in helping to build the railroads and finally settling in San Francisco. Shek and his brother, Wong, endure the "steel cold nights" of the two-month ship passage to the new world, slamming spikes through the Sierras, setting dynamite in mountain sides, building trestles, hunger strikes and frostbite.

The tradition of Georges de LaTour and Caravaggio via Walt Disney make Soenpiet’s dramatic illustrations suitable for children under 12. Most of the illustrations are adapted from well-known photographs. Even after child punishment laws were enacted in California in the 1940s, Chinese language schools in San Francisco continued to break the fingers of anyone who dared to use his/her left hand for writing. Soenpiet uses left-handedness as an aesthetic, which makes the pictures wrong historically. Soenpiet has pigtails flying in every direction, on almost every page, despite modern academics’ assertions to the contrary.

"Coolie" and "Chink" were, and are, derogatory. These words are diluted today, but they still pack emotional power. It is to Yin’s credit that she uses the term "Coolies" for her title. Just as paw paw passes on her story of her ancestors, this book can serve as a great introduction to children about a very black chapter in Chinese American history.

Young readers will like this book. It is well written and the illustrations are dramatic enough to pique interest.

James C. Leong