FRANK CHIN BLOGSITE: Where Did the Term "Day of Remembrance" Come From?

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Where Did the Term "Day of Remembrance" Come From?

I (Eddie) hope you all had fun celebrating the Year of the Dog this Chinese New Year (here's a great way to commemorate the occasion).

(image by Frank Ishii)

By the way, Day of Remembrance is coming soon for Japanese America, but did you ever wonder where that term came from?:

"What's so ironic for all the people in Japanese America who hate Frank Chin, I wonder how many of them realize that 'The Day of Remembrance' was coined by Frank Chin. 'The Day of Remembrance' was invented by Frank Chin... that 'The Day of Remembrance', which is now a part of Japanese American culture, celebrated every year on February 19th, was coined by Frank Chin!"

- Frank Abe, journalist and producer of the PBS documentary Conscience and the Constitution

"Day of Remembrance is all over the place. People have taken that term and used it beyond the Nikkei community. But the first one was orchestrated and directed and conducted by Frank Chin."

- Lawson Inada, author, poet and editor of Only What We Could Carry

Both quotes come from Curtis Choy's documentary What's Wrong With 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