Lensey Namioka () ( or ; born June 14, 1929) is a Chinese-born American writer of books for young adults and children. She writes about China and Chinese American families, as well as Japan, her husband's native country.

Early life and education

She was born as Lensey Chao in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, the daughter of

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Yuenren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (; 3 November 1892 – 25 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born an ...

and

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

Buwei Yang Chao. The family moved frequently in China. In 1937, the Chaos were living in

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

, and fled westward in the face of the Japanese invasion. They eventually made their way to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, then to

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. When she moved to the United States from China at age of nine, Lensey Chao initially knew no English. Because it used the same numerals regardless of languages, math seemed easier to her than other school subjects. Lensey Chao attended

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

and the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

,. where her father was a professor of Asian Studies, to study mathematics. Here she met and married

Isaac Namioka Isaac Namioka (April 25, 1928 - September 25, 2019) was a Japanese-American mathematician who worked in general topology and functional analysis. He was a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Washington. He died at home in Seatt ...

, a fellow graduate student who was born in Japan. Namioka ended up earning a bachelor's and a master's degree in math.

Origin of her first name

Lensey Namioka is the only person known to have the first name "Lensey". Her name has an especially unusual property for a Chinese person born in China: there are no

Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

to represent it. When Lensey's father was cataloging all of the

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

used in Chinese, he noted that there were two syllables that were possible in the Chinese language, but which were used in no Chinese words. These syllables could be written in

Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh (), abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself lat ...

as "len" and "sey." His third daughter was born soon after, so he named her "Lensey."

Career

Namioka's first love has been reading and writing adventure stories. As a child, she read Chinese martial arts novels, as well as

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...

stories and

The Three Musketeers ''The Three Musketeers'' (french: Les Trois Mousquetaires, links=no, ) is a French historical adventure novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. It is in the swashbuckler genre, which has heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight f ...

. At the age of eight, she wrote her first book on pieces of scrap paper that she sewed together with thread. It was about a woman warrior called the ''Princess with a Bamboo Sword''. In the 1970s, on a visit to Japan, Namioka visited

Namioka Castle was a Muromachi period Japanese castle located in what is now the city of Aomori, Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of far northern Japan. The ruins were designated a National Historic Site in 1940 by the Japanese government. Situation N ...

. The experience inspired her to learn more about the

Samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

. This study culminated in ''The Samurai and the Long-nosed Devils'', which was published in 1976. Namioka expanded this book into a whole series of books about samurai in sixteenth-century Japan. Namioka has also written a series of books about a Chinese American family named Yang, and several books about young women and girls facing difficult choices, as well as

travel books The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period ...

about Japan and China.

Personal life

The Namiokas moved to Ithaca, New York, where Isaac taught at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, and Lensey taught at

Wells College Wells College is a private liberal arts college in Aurora, New York. The college has cross-enrollment with Cornell University and Ithaca College. For much of its history it was a women's college. Wells College is located in the Finger Lakes reg ...

. The family moved to Seattle in 1964, when Isaac accepted a position at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. Namioka has two daughters, Aki (born 1959) and Michi (born 1961).

Awards and recognition

Namioka has won many awards for her work. For instance,'' Ties That Bind, Ties That Break'' was named one of the American Library Association's 10 Best Books for Young People, and also won the California Young Reader Medal and the Washington State Governor's Writers Award. She also won the Washington State Governor's Writers Award in 1990 for ''Island of Ogres''.

Publications

Books

* ''The Samurai and the Long-Nosed Devils'' (New York: D. McKay, 1976) * ''White Serpent Castle'' (McKay, 1976) * ''Japan: a Traveler's Companion'' (1979) * ''Valley of the Broken Cherry Trees'' (1980) * ''Who's Hu?'' (1981) * ''Village of the Vampire Cat'' (1981) * ''China: a Traveler's Companion'' (1985) * ''Phantom of Tiger Mountain'' (1986) * ''Island of Ogres'' (1989) * ''Coming of the Bear'' (1992) * ''Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear'' (1992) * ''April and the Dragon Lady'' (1994) * ''Yang the Third and Her Impossible Family'' (1995) * ''The Loyal Cat'' (1995) * ''Den of the White Fox'' (1997) * ''The Laziest Boy in the World'' (1998) * ''Yang the Second and Her Secret Admirers'' (1998) * ''

Ties that Bind, Ties that Break ''Ties That Bind, Ties That Break'' is a young adult novel by Lensey Namioka, published in 1999. The novel tells the story of a girl who defied tradition in China in the early 1900s and later moved to the United States. It received the Washington ...

'' (1999) * ''Yang the Eldest and His Odd Jobs'' (2000) * ''The Hungriest Boy in the World'' (2001) * ''An Ocean Apart, a World Away'' (2002) * ''Half and Half'' (2003) * ''Mismatch'' (Delacorte Press, 2006) * ''The Lost Village'' (2012)

Selected short stories

* LAFFF * The Inn of Lost Time * Fox Hunt

References

Sources

''Meet the Author Lensey Namioka'', eduplace.com

''Lensey Namioka'', goodreads.com

External links

* archived 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Namioka, Lensey 1929 births American children's writers Chinese children's writers American women children's writers Chinese women children's writers Writers from Beijing Chinese emigrants to the United States University of California, Berkeley alumni American writers of Chinese descent Living people 21st-century American women