Minor Heresies, Major Departures: A China Mission Boyhood

Looking back on his childhood in Shanghai during the early 1900s as the son of American missionaries, Espey, a professor emeritus of English at UCLA, is critical of his parents' view of the Chinese, which he sees as typical of an ``American attitude that led self-righteously into policies supporting reactionary governments abroad and an unquestioning assumption of superior knowledge in all things.'' Still, this is a gentle memoir evoking the simple pleasures of Espey's youth, his sense of being influenced simultaneously by the Chinese culture and by the Presbyterian ethic of his parents. Although he and his older sister, Mary Frances, jousted with the local children, he had no real friends among them; attending American schools in Shanghai, he never became fluent in Chinese. Espey's sensitive perceptions evoke a vivid contrast between the earthy, practical Chinese and Shanghai's isolated foreign community during the era between the Boxer Rebellion and the Japanese invasion. In 1937 his family was forced to leave. This droll and graceful memoir draws on Espey's previous books, among them Tales Out of School . (Apr.)