Over the next few weeks we will be focusing particularly on Mongolia as our new theme on PaperTigers. We are delighted to begin with an interview with Dori Jones Yang, author of the recently released book, Daughter of Xanadu.

Dori Jones Yang grew up in Ohio, the daughter of a bookseller, and fell in love with foreign travel at an early age. Among other languages, she speaks fluent Mandarin and has lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, where she was foreign correspondent for Business Week.

Her first book, The Secret Voice of Gina Zhang, was a Skipping Stones Honor Book in 2001, and was also awarded the Pleasant T. Rowland Prize for Fiction for Girls. Her most recent book is Daughter of Xanadu, set in 13th century Mongolia, under the Khubilai Khan.

Dori lives near Seattle with her husband Paul Yang; they have three grown-up children.
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Your latest book, Daughter of Xanadu, is set in the thirteenth-century Mongol Empire and conveys a great deal of what life was like under Khubilai Khan. What research did you do and at what point did you find your story within it? How much did you draw on Marco Polo’s writing?

Marco Polo’s own book about his travels inspired me. He tells the tale of Ai-Jaruk, a Mongolian princess who defeated all would-be suitors in wrestling and won the right to become a warrior and live her own life. That story sparked my imagination. But the character I created, Emmajin, is an archer, not a wrestler, and she is deeper and more thoughtful.

Daughter of Xanadu’s heroine, Emmajin, is a forceful character whose views are increasingly challenged as the book progresses, mostly through her contact with Marco Polo, “the foreigner.” How difficult was it to write of Emmajin’s convictions and in particular her determination to become a soldier?

In my life, I was one of the first women students at Princeton and one of the early women business journalists, so I understand what it feels like to break into traditionally male worlds. However, I know little about the military and never aspired to be a soldier, so I had to imagine that desire. Mainly, Emmajin wanted to earn respect, so she aimed for the most highly admired profession in her society: war hero.

One of the many themes explored in the book is the gulf between the reality of war and the reshaping of those experiences into epic tales told after the event. How important did you feel it was not to shy away from giving a vivid description of the Battle of Vochan?

Marco Polo himself described the Battle of Vochan in dramatic terms, how the Mongol archers faced thousands of elephants, so I openly borrowed from him. However, I do believe that stories of battles are retold in overly glorious ways meant to encourage young soldiers to fight, and I wanted to make sure Emmajin realized that.

What do you hope today’s young readers will relate to and ponder in the story?

The main message is that it’s important to get to know foreigners. In every country, in every era, it’s easy to slip into an ‘us-vs.-them’ mentality, to look on ‘them’ as sub-human so that we can wage war on them. But when you get to know someone from a faraway country as a human being with hopes and dreams, your worldview shifts. By learning how others see the world, you come to understand yourself and your own people better, and war no longer seems like a sensible option.

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Dori in Mongolia paying a fiddle with a carved horse’s head

and Mongolian Yurts photographed by Dori



Read the rest of the interview here

PaperTigers is delighted to be hosting author and illustrator Grace Lin on Day 2 of her Blog Tour to introduce her latest book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which, as Aline pointed out last week, has already received its first award! We’ll be publishing a full review in our next issue of PaperTigers… in the meantime, Grace has kindly answered some questions and shared some pictures with us.

Welcome, Grace: thank you for joining us!

In an article you once wrote called “Why Couldn’t Snow White be Chinese?”, you talk about an experience you had as a child when your school put on a production of The Wizard of Oz and you were told by a friend you couldn’t be chosen to play Dorothy because “Dorothy’s not Chinese”. How would you relate that experience to your writing of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which has been described as being written in “the Wizard of Oz tradition”?

Wow, that is a very astute observation of my work. While I did not write Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as an attempt to create an Asian Dorothy, it is probably one of the reasons why I felt so strongly that the main character needed to be a girl and why this book is an Asian-inspired fantasy (a story influenced by my Asian-American values rather than an attempt at a traditional Chinese tale).

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is very, very loosely based on the Chinese folktale “Olive Lake,” Aside from adding many layers and changing plot points, I also changed the main character from an adult male to the girl, Minli. In some ways it may have been easier to leave the character male; I would not have had to worry about how I bent /ignored some Chinese customs that inhibit women — like the fact that there is no foot binding, for example. But I very much wanted the main character to be a girl, a strong and brave and clever girl who (now that you mention it) was someone I would’ve wanted to pretend that I was as I child.

You have referred to your illustrating of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as being “like the classic books of yore” – do you think illustrated books for independant readers are starting to be published a bit more nowadays and how important do you think they are? (more…)

Indian writer Swapna Dutta has contributed some great articles to PaperTigers over the past few years, so we are delighted now to publish an interview with her as an added extra to our January/February update.

In it, she talks about her own stories and the challenges of retelling classic tales. She also makes some interesting observations about the languages of books published in India…