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Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1885 -The Traitor
Laurence Yep
Fiction (Series)
12 and up
HarperCollins, 2003, 0-06-027522-7
Joseph Young is living and working with his father in a Chinese mining camp in Wyoming Territory. The life is hard and Joseph and his father are not getting along very well. Joseph’s father, Otter, is always trying to help his fellow Chinese, even though they treat him with disdain. Why does Otter insist on trying to help his countrymen when they don’t want to have anything to do with him? Joseph, who was born in America, wants to live like an American and not like a Chinese. Why should he and his father send all the money they earn back to China? Why should their relatives in China live a life of comfort when he and Otter have to work like slaves? It doesn’t make sense to Joseph, and yet Otter insists that this is how it has to be.
In the little town of Rock Springs, near the Chinese mining camp, John Purdy lives with his mother who is a laundry woman. Practically everyone in the town, including his own mother, hates the Chinese. They resent the fact that the Chinese are given jobs that white folks could have. In actual fact it is not the Chinese who are taking the jobs. Instead it is the white businessmen like J. Gould who are choosing to hire them. After all Chinese laborers cost less than white ones and they will work hard and put up with more. The anti-Chinese sentiment is growing and growing around John.
Just like Joseph, who does not fit in with the white Americans or the Chinese, John lives on the fringes of society too. In his case it is because he is illegitimate. Even those who should be kind to him are not, and his life is quite simply miserable.
By pure chance Joseph and John become friends. They find that they have much in common and when violence breaks out between the whites and the Chinese, both boys worry about each other.
It is hard to imagine that there ever was a time when men and women would slaughter poor defenseless people the way they did in Rock Springs on September 2nd, 1885. And yet this did indeed happen. Laurence Yep brings this story to life through the alternating narrative of these two lonely boys who both wish that they had a safe place to live where they will not be subjected to persecution. Both boys dreams of a better future and yet both are trapped in their respective worlds.
This wonderfully written, powerful, and sometimes very disturbing book is one of the titles in the Golden Mountain Chronicle series. This collection of nine books tells the story of the Young family, of seven generations of Chinese Americans who had to overcome all kinds of trials to be able to build a life for themselves in the Land of the Golden Mountain. Two of the titles in the series have earned Newbery Honors.
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