Karin K Jensen

My Name Is King Ying is due out in late 2021 as a Bound To Brew publication. It is a first-generation coming of age tale of courage, resilience, and new world dreams, a work of Chinese American history told through one family’s experiences.

King Ying is one of eight living in a one-bedroom apartment behind her father’s laundry business in Depression-era Detroit. As the eldest child, she stands on a box to fold and iron clothes. She wishes she could understand her teacher, make friends at school where racist taunts sting her, and make her father slap her less when she just wants to fit into American culture.

Someday, she vows, she’ll own a real home and dress with the elegance of her Jane Arden paper dolls, but when disaster strikes, she and siblings are sent far from her hopes to China to live with a new step-mother. In the remote village of Tai Ting Pong, she must overcome a deadly superstition and Japanese invasion before pursuing the American dream.

At sixteen, she returns to the U.S. and thinks it’s a fresh start, but cultural expectations leave her feeling trapped until she must break with what she has been taught to value or lose her chance for authentic happiness.