Frank chin biography

Frank Chin

American author and playwright

Frank Chin (born February 25, 1940) is an American author and playwright. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Asian-American theatre.

Life and career

Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California on February 25, 1940. His grandfather worked on the Western Pacific Railroad. He remained under the care of a retired vaudeville couple in Placerville, California until he was 6. At that time, his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area and thereafter Chin grew up in Oakland Chinatown. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he contributed to the California Pelican. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965. According to Chin, who had returned from a sabbatical working as the first Chinese brakeman for the Southern Pacific railroad, he intimidated a dean into graduating him with a bachelor's degree in English: "[I said] 'I want a decision by Friday' and he said, 'Well, I'm a very busy man,' and I said, 'You're a working stiff like me - you have a decision Friday and I don't care what it is. Either I've graduated or I haven't graduated because I have to get back to work.' Friday, I walked by the office and the secretary jumps up and says: 'You've graduated!' I said, 'That's all I want to know'."

Early in his career, Chin worked as a story editor and scriptwriter on Sesame Street and as a reporter for KING-TV in Seattle.

Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers of Asian-American theatre. He co-founded the Asian American Theater Company with Filipino-American playwright Melvyn Escueta in 1973. His play The Chickencoop Chinaman was the first by an Asian-American to be produced on a major New York stage. As an author, Chin has won three American Book Awards: the first in 1982 for his plays The Chickencoop

  • Frank Chin is an American author

    • Image: Writer Frank Chin in his San Fransisco apartment in 1975

    Photo by Nancy Wong

    Frank Chin was born in 1940 in Berkeley, California. He self-identifies as a "Chinaman," an identity that he deliberately distinguishes from Chinese American, which he considers assimilationist. As a young man, Chin worked for the Western Pacific Railroad, following in the footsteps of his grandfather. He later returned to his studies and graduated from Berkeley in 1966 with a degree in English. In 1972 Frank Chin's play The Chickencoop Chinaman was the first play by an Asian American ever produced onstage in New York. He was a pioneer figure in Asian-American theatre, and he co-founded the Asian American Theatre Workshop (now the Asian American Theatre Company) in 1973. Since then, he has gone on to write other plays, author numerous books, and edit multiple anthologies of Asian American literature. Frank Chin is widely known as a critic of Asian American literature that he considers fake and assimilationist, and frequently criticizes the work of Asian American authors. He has won 3 American Book Awards (1982, 1989, and 2000) and is considered by many to be the godfather of Asian American literature.

    The Chickencoop Chinaman (1972)

    The Chickencoop Chinaman, which opened at the American Place Theatre in New York City on May 27th, 1972,focuses on Tam Lum, a Chinese American writer and filmmaker. Having traveled to Pittsburgh to meet the father of the subject of his latest documentary, Tam Lum reunites with his old friend Kenji, a Japanese American dentist. Tensions rise as Tam clashes with Lee, Kenji’s long-term houseguest (who might be pregnant with his child), and her son, Robbie, about her fetishization of Asian culture. Throughout the play, characters interrogate stereotypes of Asian American identity, masculinity, and cultural tradition. This play could be used to start a dialogue about language and racial/cultural identity, or in a stu

    an essay/interview
    by Frank Abe

    The Bloomsbury Review
    September, 1991

    Copyright 1991 by Owaissa Communications Co. All rights reserved.

    “Life is war.  All individuals are born soldiers.  All behavior is tactics and strategy.  All relationships are martial.”  Frank Chin smiles more pleasantly than demonically as he calmly ticks off the elements of the heroic tradition in Chinese literature that sustain him and his writing.  “The war that every Chinese fights is a war of maintaining and perfecting personal integrity.”

    In the heroic tradition good people are made outlaws by a corrupt, mercenary state.  That may perfectly describe Chin’s current place in the field of Asian American literature — ironic, since it’s a field Chin helped define.  For him life has always been a war to reclaim a history he says was nearly destroyed by Christian missionaries and is now being faked by writers continuing to work in that tradition.  His voice has been shaped by the battles he’s fought, and like the storyteller he is, each battle becomes part of his lore.

    Chin incorporates real Chinese folk tales in his novel, Donald Duk(Coffee House Press), in which he manages to portray a character who hates being Chinese without himself putting down or corrupting Chinese history and culture.  Twelve year old Donald Duk is a classic case of Asian American self-contempt; he hates his comic-sounding name and everything Chinese.  “But I use the fairy tales, I use Chinese American history, and those aspects of Chinese American history that seem to have been ignored by Asian American studies: the history of the railroad, the mines, San Francisco, the tongs.  My main concern was to write a novel that uses all of this stuff that is accessible, to write a novel that deals with white racism and Chinese American history and the real Chinese fairy tales and the heroic tradition, and to demonstrate that a Chinese American could do al

    Frank Chin Biography

    Asian-American novelist and playwright, born in Berkeley, California, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, the State University of Iowa, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chin, who was the first Chinese-American brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad, later became the first contemporary Chinese-American playwright to have his work staged in New York at the American Place Theatre: The Chickencoop Chinaman was performed in 1972, as was The Year of the Dragon (televised on PBS in 1975). He was a founding member of the East West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theatre company in the nation. For his work as co-editor of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, a seminal anthology published in 1975 by Howard University Press, and for his recovery of ‘lost’ Asian-American authors such as Toshio Mori and John Okada, he is often considered the grandfather of Asian-American literature. His own more recent work includes a collection of short fiction, The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco RR Co (1988), which includes excerpts from his unpublished novel, ‘A Chinese Lady Dies’; the Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese American Literature (1991); and the novels Donald Duk (1991), a Bildungsroman set in San Francisco's Chinatown, and Gunga Din Highway (1994).

    Additional topics

    Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: Cheltenham Gloucestershire to Cockermouth Cumbria

  • Frank Chin (born February 25, 1940)