Frank Chin in Bruce Lee Documentary

ESPN's Be Water has a short clip of Frank in it. More information here.

Frank commented on Bruce before. Check it out:




[The youtube channel this video clip comes from is not Frank Chin's official youtube site, he doesn't have one yet.]

Did Frank Chin say he will beat up Maxine Hong Kingston?

"Frank does terrible things. He tells me when he sees me at a conference he's going to beat me up."

- Maxine Hong Kingston on Frank Chin (source)

What gave Kingston the idea that Frank wanted to beat her up?  Allegedly, it was in a letter correspondence she had with Frank back in 1976.  Says Kingston:

"He even wrote me a letter that he's going to beat me up if he sees me."
(Source)

The only letter I (Eddie) am aware of was mentioned in Curtis Choy's documentary on Frank (those letters were dated in 1976, too).  There was no mention of Frank looking to physically hurt Kingston in the film.

Just recently, a number of close associates of Frank's were asked from a fact-checker from The New Yorker about any 1976 letter where Frank supposedly made this threat.  The fact-checker was working on a forthcoming article on Maxine Hong Kingston (which was just released) and wanted to look further into this.

Unless we missed it, we were unaware of any letter of this kind, and we never witnessed first-hand where Frank had the idea of beating up Maxine Hong Kingston.  The only person I'm aware of who knows about this threat is Maxine Hong Kinston.

The fact-checker told me she found the 1976 letter in question.   According to the aforementioned New Yorker article,

Chin once wrote her a heated letter saying that the only reason for meeting would be for 'a public fight, but I’m not anxious for that.'

Frank was obviously talking about a public debate, not an effort to show off his physical prowess as a martial artist on a female author.  Furthermore, Kingston left her return address on the envelope (watch the documentary and you'll see it).  It would be awfully strange to tell your perpetrator where you live if you think they'll come and beat you up.

The idea that Frank wanted to physically beat up Kingston is absolutely absurd.  Frank accused Kingston of making up white racist stories of Chinese History.  It appears she's making up stories of Chinese men.

This rumor of Frank has been going around for decades.  I thank the fact-checker and author for quoting Frank.  I often find rumors of Frank lacking in substance and merit.  This is yet another one of those cases, I'm afraid.

More here.