Yep's autobiography lacks the liveliness and grace of his best fiction. For the most part, Yep keeps the personal at a distance, the organization has little shape or focus, and the good stuff is nearly buried in nostalgic anecdotes about family, neighborhood, and school. However, there is inherent drama in the story of the ambivalent immigrant boy (I was the Chinese American raised in a black neighborhood, a child who had been too American to fit into Chinatown and too Chinese to fit in elsewhere), and readers will enjoy his account of how his memories of being an outsider are transformed into his stories. This is a natural choice for curriculum units on immigration and multiculturalism and as a lead-in to some of the outstanding adult writing on growing up Chinese American. (Reviewed Oct. 15, 1991)

Photographs. Concentrating on his childhood and youth in San Francisco, the award-winning writer sketches a funny and memorable portrait, rich in anecdote and characterization. He expresses his feelings about growing up an outsider, of being caught between two cultures, and the influence these experiences have had on his work. An inviting and well-written book.

In a strong debut for the new In My Own Words'' series, the author of The Star Fisher (see below) portrays his own youth. Brought up in San Francisco, where his parents managed for years to defend a mom-and-pop grocery against an increasingly rough non-Chinese neighborhood, Yep went to Chinatown to attend a Catholic school and to visit his grandmother. Always aware of belonging to several cultures, he is a keen observer who began early tokeep a file of family history'' and who tellingly reveals how writing fiction, honestly pursued, can lead to new insights: in putting his own mean'' teacher into one book, he began for the first time to understand her viewpoint. He divides his account topically, rather than chronologically, with chapters on the store, Chinatown, family tradition, being an outsider, etc., concluding with his college years (Culture Shock'') and some later experiences especially related to his writing. Always, Yep is trying to integrate his many pieces'' (raised in a black neighborhood...too American to fit into Chinatown and too Chinese to fit in elsewhere...the clumsy son of the athletic family...''), until he discovers that writing transforms him ``from being a puzzle to a puzzle solver.'' A detailed, absorbing picture of Chinese-American culture in the 50's and 60's, of particular interest to Yep's many admirers or would-be writers. (Autobiography. 11-15)"

Gr 6-12-- Although this memoir takes readers through Yep's college years, the focus is clearly on his childhood. Born and raised in San Francisco, he gives a vivid account of life in that city in the '50s and '60s and his own quest for personal identity. Raised largely in the mainstream culture, yet influenced also by his Chinese heritage, Yep's piecing together of his own puzzle provides fascinating insights into the whole American mosaic. Readers of his novels will be intrigued by references to their gestation and what people and episodes from life were transformed into now classic fiction. Whether musing on his inventive parents; growing up Asian in a black, Hispanic, and white neighborhood; or enduring the drudgery in the family store, Yep always offers something of value for readers to enjoy and mull over. Family photographs add to the immediacy and illustrate the text to a greater degree than in most biographies. The writing is warm, wry, and humorous right--to the dryly droll colophon. The Last Garden will be welcomed as a literary autobiography for children and, more, a thoughtful probing into what it means to be an American.-- John Philbrook, San Francisco Public Library