Frank Chin

Playwright Bio

Frank Chin stands in the center of the black-and-white image, wearing glasses and holding a mug. He is wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt. He has dark hair and a mustache, and is wearing a bandana around his neck.

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.

Highlighted Play

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 study of representations of Asian American masculinity.

Sample Activity

This play would complement an upper-level high school curriculum in either an English or Social Studies classroom. Any study of the play should start by situating the work within the cultural movements and conflicts that it comments upon (for example, the oppressions, micro-aggressions, and legal restrictions that have impacted Chinese immigrants throughout American history). Additionally, The Chickencoop Chinaman is an excellent avenue through which to explore the inherently performative nature of language, how language relates to our self-presentation and to others' perceptions of us, and how language is directly tied to identity. One way in which students could go about doing this is by composing their own origin stories, using Tam Lum's opening monologue and origin story from the beginning of the play as a model. Students could compose monologues that use specific and intentional language choices to communicate particular aspects of their identities. Then, after completing their monologues, students could engage in a revision process during which they consider how they might revise their pieces for varying audiences: how would you revise this monologue if you were presenting it to an audience of your family members? Friends? Strangers? This activity would simultaneously invite students to think critically about the relationship between language and identity and encourage them to dig more deeply into considering the significance of Tam Lum's opening monologue to the play as a whole. This activity could be the start of a unit studying the play in detail, during which students track characters' linguistic choices throughout the show, or could comprise the start of a creative writing unit in which students are invited to consider the connections between language and identity in a variety of genres.

Discussion Questions

  1. What were your first impressions after reading this play?

  2. The play opens with Tam telling various versions of his own origin story, composing a myth of creation for himself ("in the beginning there was the Word!"). Much of this origin story focuses on language and specific verbiage. How does Tam use language to construct his identity as a Chinaman (and the various identities that he assumes ) throughout The Chickencoop Chinaman?

  3. Reviewer Shu Yan Chan described Frank Chin's writing style as full of "buckshot likes that are not evenly supported by action or setting" (15), but argues that Frank Chin, like Tam, must continue to make his voice heard: "Frank Chin's badmouth shouldn't stop, if only because of the awful silence and results of silence that would follow" (16). To what extent do you agree with this assessment?

  4. How do various cultural expectations of masculinity, identity, and fatherhood clash throughout the play?

  5. On page 444 of Borderlands Gloria Anzaldúa writes that "we oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be the 'real' Chicanans, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience" (444). How might Frank Chin feel about these words, or about Anzaldúa's concept of linguistic hybridity as a whole?

  6. In an excerpt from the "Chinaman" chapter of Confessions of a Number One Son, Chin writes: "our 'identity crisis is only fifty years old and isn't rooted in the agony of our ancestors, Chinese culture, Ah-What'shisname, or anything from the inside. Our 'identity crisis,' the core of our inner beings, is rooted in American camp trivia" (250). How does this sentiment relate to the Lone Ranger Interlude in The Chickencoop Chinaman?

  7. Frank Chin has written about his enjoyment of mixing myth and origin stories with low-brow everyday events. He cites origin stories as central to the development of a shared cultural identity. How does Tam Lum's origin story emerge throughout the play? And how does its creation meld the mythic and daily life?

  8. In their "Review of Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature" Wong and Santa Ana write that "Frank Chin, perhaps the best known of the androcentric cultural nationalist writers, relies on misogyny and homophobia in his attempt to delineate and construct a (hetero)normative Asian American manhood" (190). To what extent do you (dis)agree with this statement as applied to The Chickencoop Chinaman? What are the roles of women? Or of men who do not conform to the hypermasculine Chinaman aesthetic?

Annotated Works

The Year of the Dragon (1974)

Frank Chin is seated stage right in a kitchen chair onstage during a production of The Year of the Dragon, captured in a black-and-white photograph. George Woo, the actor playing his father, stands stage left and points down in a scolding gesture, while a third character looks on from upstage.

Image: Frank Chin and George Woo play father and son in

"The Year of the Dragon," 1978

Photo by Nancy Wong

Fred Eng, a Chinese American fortysomething aspiring-writer-turned-Chinatown-tour-guide, lives with his family in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In The Year of the Dragon Fred wrestles with resentment toward his father (for whom he gave up his career as a writer), frustration with his biological mother (who has recently joined the family in America after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943), and the competing pulls of a new life with his sister and her husband in Boston and his responsibilities to his family in SF Chinatown. Additionally, Fred feels pressure to help his younger brother, Johnny, get out of Chinatown and start a new life elsewhere. Throughout a series of tense conversations as the family gathers to celebrate Chinese New Year, this play navigates large questions about family ties, independence, and cultural differences between Chinese people living in America and Chinese Americans. This play could add depth to a study of the performance of race and culture, or could be used to investigate the ties between language and identity for Asian Americans. The Year of the Dragon opened at the American Place Theatre in New York City on May 22nd, 1974.

Donald Duk (1991)

Video: Frank Chin reads aloud from Donald Duk during a presentation at the University of California as part of their "Artists on the Cutting Edge" series in 1999


Donald Duk is a bildungsroman novel in which the title character, eleven-year-old Donald, is about to complete his first cycle of the Chinese zodiac. As this auspicious date approaches, Donald reflects on his name and the difficulties it has caused him in school, as well as the clashing cultures of his school environment and his home in Chinatown. Donald narrates the work in the first person and offers readers intimate insight into his developing attitudes about the cultures, religions, social groups, and languages that he juggles as an Asian American adolescent. This book could be used in a classroom to start important conversations about code-switching, Asian American culture and family dynamics, and the experiences of adolescent Asian Americans.

Comprehensive List of Works

Plays

  • The Chickencoop Chinaman (1972)

  • The Year of the Dragon (1974)

  • Gee Pop! (1976, unpublished)

Books (Co-Editor)

  • Yardbird Reader Volume 3 (1974)

  • Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974)

  • The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991)

Books (Author)

  • The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. (1988)

  • Donald Duk (1991)

  • Gunga Din Highway (1994)

  • Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays (1998)

  • Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947 (2002)

  • The Confessions of a Number One Son: The Great Chinese American Novel (2015)

Movies

  • The Year of the Dragon (1975)

Documentaries

  • What's Wrong with Frank Chin (2005) (Subject)

  • And Still Champion! The Story of Archie Moore (1967) (Writer)

  • The Last Temple (1972) (Director)

Additional Resources

Documentary: What's Wrong with Frank Chin? (2005)

What's Wrong with Frank Chin? is a documentary made in 2005 by Frank Chin's colleague and mentee, Curt Choy that covers the major events in Chin's life and offers some suggestions as to why his works have historically been overlooked and under-represented despite their pioneer status. When asked to describe Frank Chin, Choy said, "Frank has his way and rarely gets swayed. And maybe never considers that someone else may be more right about anything. Most geniuses are not nice people. I'm enough of an anarchist that I let others do what they will. What frustrates me is he will righteously paint himself into a corner and do nothing but irritate his supporters. We believe in his ideas but don't rely on him as a friend. He's always said that he doesn't want disciples and will not cultivate friendships. He has been true to his word." This documentary expands on Choy's sentiments as explicated here and includes interviews with colleagues, peers, and even Frank Chin himself.

Bibliography

Chin, Frank. “Rendezvous.” Conjunctions, no. 21, 1993, pp. 291–302. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24515481. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Kim, Esther S. Theatre Journal, vol. 53, no. 4, 2001, pp. 638–640. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25068992. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Chan, Jeffery Paul. “‘I’m a Chinaman’: An Interview with Frank Chin (1970).” Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Judy Yung et al., 1st ed., University of California Press, 2006, pp. 304–311. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pppwn.51. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Ma, Sheng-mei. “Orientalism in Chinese American Discourse: Body and Pidgin.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 23, no. 4, 1993, pp. 104–117. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3195209. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Chan, Shu Yan. MELUS, vol. 2, no. 4, 1975, pp. 14–16. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/763474. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

McMillin, Calvin, editor. “The Chinaman.” The Confessions of a Number One Son: The Great Chinese American Novel, by Frank Chin, University of Hawai'i Press, 2015, pp. 248–262. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1k07.17. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

“The Chinaman’s Unmanly Grief.” Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage, by Josephine Lee, Temple University Press, 1997, pp. 61–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bs9mw.6. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

“Noise, Trouble and Backtalk, 1960s–70s.” Asian American Literature, by Bella Adams, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2008, pp. 72–106. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b5f6.9. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “The Remasculinization of Chinese America: Race, Violence, and the Novel.” American Literary History, vol. 12, no. 1/2, 2000, pp. 130–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/490245. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Eddie. “Interview with Curtis Choy.” Frank Chin Blogsite, 6 Nov. 2016, chintalks.blogspot.com/2016/11/interviewwith-curtis-choy.html.


Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 437-451.


Choy, Curtis. “What’s Wrong with Frank Chin?” Vimeo, uploaded by Manilatown Media, 2 June 2020 (film originally released in 2005) https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whatswrongwithfrankchin. Accessed 3 March 2021.


University of California Television. “Artists on the Cutting Edge: Frank Chin.” Youtube, uploaded by UCTV, 1 February 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuShyQznHjw. Accessed 2 March 2021.


officialtimelyrain. “Traditional Chinese Storytelling with Frank Chin.” Youtube, uploaded by officialtimelyrain 12 June 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzFAE6onChw. Accessed 2 March 2021.

Chin, Frank, et al. Aiiieeeee!: an Anthology of Asian American Writers. University of Washington Press, 2019.

“What's Wrong with Frank Chin?” UC Berkeley Library, UC Berkeley, www.lib.berkeley.edu/mrcvault/videographies/whats-wrong-frank-chin.

“Author Profile: Frank Chin [in Notable Asian Americans].” BookDragon, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, 26 Nov. 2017, smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/author-profile-frank-chin/.

Chin, Frank. The Chickencoop Chinaman and the Year of the Dragon: Two Plays. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. Accessed via Internet Archive.

Chin, Frank. Donald Duk: A Novel. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991. Accessed via HathiTrust Digital Library.

Wong, Sau-ling C., and Jeffrey J. Santa Ana. “Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature.” Signs, vol. 25, no. 1, 1999, pp. 171–226. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3175619. Accessed 3 Mar. 2021.

Information for this Web Page compiled by Jessica Kosek (2021)