Frank+Chin

 Frank Chin


Frank Chin (pinyin: Zhào Jiànxiù) born February 25, 1940 is an American author and playwright. He was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown. He attended college at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an American Book Award in 1989 for a collection of short stories, and another in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Source

﻿Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. He founded the Asian American Theatre Workshop, which became the Asian American Theater Company in 1973. He first gained notoriety as a playwright in the 1970s. His play The Chickencoop Chinaman was the first by an Asian American to be prouced on a major New York stage. Stereotypes of Asian Americans, and traditional Chinese folklore are common themes in much of his work. Frank Chin has accused other Asian American writers, particularly Maxine Hong Kingston, of furthering such stereotypes and misrepresenting the traditional stories. Chin, during his professional career, has been highly critical of American writer, Amy Tan, for her telling of Chinese-American stories, indicating that her body of work has furthered and reinforced stereotypical views of this group.

Frank Chin often brags that he was the first Chinese American playwright to have his work produced off Broadway in New York City, and it is true that his literary reputation initially rested upon two plays, The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon, produced in the first half of the 1970s and published together as a book in 1981. Subsequently, though, Chin has become one of the most diverse of all Asian American authors, publishing two novels, a volume of short stories, and a collection of essays; he also has coedited two groundbreaking anthologies,Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) andThe Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese American Writers (1991). All of Chin's works—plays, fiction, essays, and criticism—reveal his determination to remake or reconfigure the Chinese American male, to restore the masculinity, sexuality, voice, and power that were stripped away by white Americans and Western culture. 

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Plays

 * The Chickencoop Chinaman (1971)-- the first play by an Asian American to be produced as a mainstream New York theater production.
 * The Year of the Dragon(1974)

Books

 * Yardbird Reader Volume 3 (1974) (co-editor, contributor)
 * Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) (Co-editor, contributor)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. (1988)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Donald Duk (1991)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991) (Co-editor, contributor)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Gunga Din Highway (1994)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays (1998)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947 (2002)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Works in Anthologies

 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Food for All His Dead", in The Young American Writers (1967) (Richard Kostelanetz, ed.)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Goong Hai Fot Choi", in 19 Necromancers from Now (1970) (Ishmael Reed ed.)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Year of the Dragon, in Modern American Scenes for Student Actors (1978) (Wynn Handman, ed.)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"The Only Real Day", in The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology, Selections from the American Book Awards 1980-1990 (1992)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Yes, Young Daddy", in Coming of Age in America (1994) (Mary Frosch, ed.)

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Movies
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Year of the Dragon was an adaptation of Chin's play of the same name. Starring George Takei, the film was televised in 1975 as part of the PBS Great Performances series. ==<span style="font-size: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">**<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Documentaries ** ==

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">What's Wrong with Frank Chin is a 2005 biographical documentary about Chin's life.
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Frank Chin was interviewed in the documentary The Slanted Screen (2006), directed by Jeff Adachi, about the representation of Asian and Asian American men in Hollywood.