Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2002
Abstract
Born in Berkeley in 1940, Frank Chin lived in the Motherlode country of California’s Sierra foothills during the Second World War before returning to the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended the University of California at Berkeley as an English major, but was drawn away to work for railroad companies throughout the west. Such early experiences of movement and transience would provide the foundations for the shifting settings of much of his drama, fiction, and criticism that would follow; additionally, this transience would also underlie the complex tone, treatment, and perception of Asian American identity that characterizes his work and distinguishes Chin from many of his contemporaries in literature and criticism. As Dorothy Ritsuko McDonald comments, Chin has constantly worked to reclaim the history of Chinese Americans as a “valiant, vital part of the history of the American West," to counter dominant narratives and historical fantasies about passive, obedient, humble, and effeminate Asian Americans (ix). As though countering such preconceptions about Asian American passivity through physical as well as creative activity, Chin has led a relatively transient life, although primarily along Interstate 5 between Washington and California. “Fed up with the Bay Area,” he recalls, Chin moved south to work with the East-West Players; and, although no longer with the group, he continues to live and work in Los Angeles.
Recommended Citation
Goshert, John Charles. Frank Chin. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 2002. Digital. Western Writers Series, 155.