Gus Lee is an author, courage trainer and former Army officer, paratrooper, deputy district attorney, acting deputy attorney general, government senior executive, corporate COO and West Point’s first Chair of Character Development. He and Diane have children and many grandchildren.
Praise for China Boy
“What a knockout. An incredibly rich and new voice or American
literature...China Boy grabs the reader’s heart and won’t let
go...A wonder of a story.”—Amy Tan, #1 New York Times bestselling
author of The Joy Luck Club
“It would be hard to find a more all-American story than the
delightful China Boy. Lee is a natural storyteller.”—TIME
“Marvelous...one small boy’s adjustment to Western culture...a pure
delight.”—The Washington Post Book World
“A robust, startling book...hilariously poignant...a fascinating,
evocative portrait of the Chinese community in California in the
1950s, caught between two complex, demanding cultures.”—The New
York Times Book Review
YA-- A warm, engaging story of seven-year-old Kai Ting, set in the tough Panhandle District of San Francisco in the 1950s. Lee includes all of the classic fairy-tale conventions: a wicked stepmother; a totally obnoxious bully, Big Willie Mack, who lives to beat Kai into pulp; Toussaint La Rue, a street-wise paladin who befriends him; and the YMCA ``Knights'' who teach this David to stand up to his street Goliath. Kai's Merlin is his Uncle Shim, a Mandarin scholar who longs to pass on his classical learning to Most Able Student Kai, the only living son of his father's Shanghai family. Readers will weep with Kai when he's locked out of the house and left as prey to the McAllister street bullies. They'll laugh with him when he confuses English idioms and ethnic street slang. They'll root heartily for him during his survival training at the Y where he transforms his body into a disciplined fighting machine, and cheer loudly when he learns to deal with the ghosts who haunt him. This timeless, magically told tale of growing up and coming of age is a perfect companion to Tan's Joy Luck Club (Putnam, 1989) or Kingston's Woman Warrior (Knopf, 1976). --Dolores M. Steinhauer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
The story of Kai Ting's coming of age in the San Francisco slums could be the story of any sensitive young boy struggling to overcome the bullies on the mean streets of a big city. Change the Chinese to Yiddish or Italian and the tale would be the same. Brutalized by a stepmother determined to expunge all traces of his Chi nese mother from the home, Kai finds himself the punching bag for every bully in the neighborhood. His salvation is the YMCA; his mentors, a group of retired boxers. While this is less a masculine Joy Luck Club than a Chinese Prince of Cen tral Park (by Evan H. Rhodes, Coward, 1975. o.p.), China Boy resonates with strong characterizations, evocative descriptions of San Francisco in the 1950s, and the righteous indignation of abused innocence. For most fiction collections. Literary Guild selection.-- Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Praise for China Boy
"What a knockout. An incredibly rich and new voice or American
literature...China Boy grabs the reader's heart and won't
let go...A wonder of a story."-Amy Tan, #1 New York Times
bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club
"It would be hard to find a more all-American story than the
delightful China Boy. Lee is a natural
storyteller."-TIME
"Marvelous...one small boy's adjustment to Western culture...a pure
delight."-The Washington Post Book World
"A robust, startling book...hilariously poignant...a fascinating,
evocative portrait of the Chinese community in California in the
1950s, caught between two complex, demanding cultures."-The New
York Times Book Review
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