My Name Is Yip
Not since Mark Twain has a novel been written so effectively in “defective” English: the struggling and antiquated prose of a 15-year-old whose unexpected journey takes him from mute outcast to adventurous partner (still mute, but communicating through a chalk board). Yip Tolroy narrates his tale of exile, captivity, and abuse with the calm acceptance of a Dickensian youth, born into poverty in 1815 in a small frontier-rugged town in Georgia. Only the friendship of an older man pulls Yip out of animal-level existence, into communication with his fellow humans.
Yip and his new friend Dud Carter witness the start of a gold rush—and then commit a crime that sends them on the run. This reduces Yip’s level of protection; familiar only with his mother’s crude home and shop, he’s suddenly struggling to survive in wilderness, with unscrupulous characters around him whose malice is far more intentional than what he could have imagined. He explains his confusion about the voices of the men he meets: “It seemed to me they was raised in Merriment & Anger both, I was not yet versed in the vacillations of character that devilish drink did induce. I did not know how it might bring a man to his knees in anguish in one moment & have him leaping for joy the next.”
Every chapter brings conflict and suspense, while Yip’s crude communication never hides his efforts to understand and to empathize. Like Gulliver among new peoples, Yip struggles to both understand his world and seek a place in it. Events are rough, yet they lead him to growth. For a reader passionate about, say, the orphan Pip, My Name Is Yip provides a quintessential American counterpart.
