FRANK CHIN BLOGSITE: Goong Hay Fot Choy

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Goong Hay Fot Choy

Dear Readers,

Well, Chinese New Year is coming this weekend. Happy Year of the Rooster! The perfect book for the occasion is Frank Chin's Donald Duk. Read Chin's novel and learn how Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year. Best-selling author Tom Robbins called Donald Duk "red hot chop suey laced with laughing powder and amphetamines - makes most so-called ‘modern’ writing look old-fashioned, chauvinistic, and tedious."

A brief book description:

As twelve-year-old Donald Duk burns 108 model airplanes in mid-flight to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Frank Chin torches stereotypes of Asian-Americans.

Welcome to Chinatown, Chinese New Year in San Francisco. The day of the dog. The day of the thief. Everybody’s birthday. The lantern festival of the fifteenth day. Welcome home. Crashing Cantonese opera, dancing lions, comic book heroes, and a childhood among partying pagans . . . . Little Donald Duk is a twelve-year-old kid with everything, including a name he doesn’t like and a family who doesn’t deserve him. As he completes his first turn around the Chinese zodiac’s cycle of twelve animals, the Mandate of Heaven turns; he takes flight and dreams himself a home.

As this novel opens, Donald Duk would rather be Fred Astaire than the son of a Chinatown restauranteur. Through the course of this robust, vigorous work, Donald learns to see himself more clearly as he, and we, see his culture free of distortive stereotypes.

Here's Chin reading the first chapter of Donald Duk:

Another one of Frank's works that takes place during Chinese New Year is his play Year of the Dragon.

(Frank Chin and Kathleen Change in a production of Year of the Dragon in 1978; photo by Nancy Wong)

There was a TV Movie based on Year of the Dragon. It actually starred George Takei in the strongest performance of his career IMO. He called it "one of the most thoroughly satisfying, fulfilling role that I've had as an actor."

Enjoy and have a happy new year!

Eddie

P. S. Oh... before I forget. Frank Chin's Amazon site is now active! Check it out: amazon.com/author/frank.chin

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Books

"That 'whole voice' which speaks so eloquently in Aiiieeeee! is an amazingly versatile voice. It is a voice that makes one believe in writing again… I herald it with rejoicing." - Kay Boyle, Rolling Stone
"The emergence 40 years later of a tightly edited, slimmed-down version of a long-lost novel from the writer who first defined Asian American literature is an unexpected gift." - Frank Abe, International Examiner. Interview with editor Calvin McMillin here.
"In the telling and retelling of our stories, we create our community of memory. This huge collection invites all of us to become listeners and to claim America." – Ronald Takaki
"Born in the USA uses insiders' accounts of the resisters' lives to explain their cause and their persecution. This is an indispensable contribution to the literature on Asian America." – Lane Hirabayashi, University of Colorado
"Chin gathers lost legends, children's stories, personal histories, tall tales, and polemics and cobbles them together into a startling, comprehensive theory of Asian American culture with an ancient past and a global reach.... The only fearless writer in Asian America is as vital now as he ever was. When the melting pot boils over again, Asian American literature will find itself back at the crossroads. Frank Chin, the trickster-devil, will be waiting." --The Village Voice
"The Year of the Dragon barges through the comfortable stereotypes of the Asian American - the quiet, hardworking contented character who keeps to himself, rarely bothering the white community. It is not an 'easy' play. The language is frequently strong, and the bitterness, even when wrapped in some very funny comedy, is unrelenting...But as a portrait of an Asian American's furious struggle for identity, the play is a searing statement, a powerful cry." -The New York Times
"The stories in Frank Chin’s first collection use fantasy, obscenity, slapstick, and acute introspection to describe the frenzied search for identity of a Chinese American artist." - The New York Times Book Review
"Frank Chin’s unique literary recipe - red hot chop suey laced with laughing powder and amphetamines - makes most so-called ‘modern’ writing look old-fashioned, chauvinistic, and tedious." - best-selling author Tom Robbins
"A complex and compelling work that takes us deep into the multicultural fabric of America." - Los Angeles Times Book Review