Keep your Christianity sheathed

Upon receiving the news that Aiiieeeee! will be reissued, Professor Justin Tse wrote the following email to Frank Chin:


November 30, 2018

Dear Frank,

Thank you so much for this email. As you know, I am one of the young professors who is not as old as the book but assigns it in far too many of the Asian American studies courses I teach here at Northwestern. In the Chinese American studies course I recently finished teaching, I assigned parts of it, as well as The Big Aiiieeeeee, for the students to adjudicate the fight you had with Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. We worked down from what seemed to be contention about feminism and misogyny and down to the problem of Christianity in relation to the martial tradition. Next quarter, I will reprise my courses on Asian American religions, as well as Asian American social movements, and of course Aiiieeeee is an important text to consider in both.

In other words, I have taught it so many times that I have been unofficially known as the ‘Frank Chin’ guy. I don’t know how I feel about that because you always ask us to be critical, even of you, because what you wish for is criticism, not a kind of weasely sucking up to you. What’s more, as you know, I’m still a Christian.

I’m looking forward to all of this, and if there’s a chance I can come by and see you when it is republished, I’ll look forward to it.

Cheers,
Justin

Justin K.H. Tse 謝堅恆, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies Program
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University


Frank to Justin:

Justin

My beef with Mad Maxine Hong Kingston is she fakes her Chinese facts - Far Mulan of the BALLAD OF MULAN is not tattooed. Yue Fei, a man, born centuries and a dynasty after Mulan's publication, is known for his mother tattooing his back, to defy The Sun of Heaven's claim to exclusive rights to this life. His life is the Country's not the Commandant - take a walk along the the long corridor at the Ming Summer Palace outside of Peking - there's a panel of Mother Yue tattooing Yue Fei's back, and Yue's wife holding a candle to light mom's work.

Mad Max Hong Kingston's pitiful Chinese victim of woman-hating culture is not one of the Four Beauties, four concubines famous for Chinese kings using to seduce and dethrone enemy kings.

If anyone is a misogynist it's Max and her crybaby supporters, all White and all Christians. Max obviously hates women generals who modeled themselves on Mulan, Liang Hongyu, Mu Guiying, and Chen Liangyu

Prove your gripe is Chinese, you Christian you!

Keep your Christianity sheathed.

You draw your soul.

I draw out mine. Kingdoms rise and fall/ Nations cone go/ Its a good day to die. Let the good times roll /

You keep it sheathed.

I keep it sheathed.

In a word: Read!

If a new AA lit mag is the goal of the reprinting- start with Asian morals and ethics as Asian Americans read what is written. - Yellow Pre-history thru Yellow children's stories - For the AA Mag, get Gary Locke's official American word on the subject of Maxine Hong Kingston and the tattoos of Far Mulan and American-Chinese literature.

No fudging allowed

FCC


Justin to Frank:

December 1, 2018


Dear Frank,

Like Sun Wukong, my provocations have achieved their desired effects. I cannot leave your five-finger mountain, try as I might to fly to the ends of the earth on my big stick. I must reply before you trap me for five hundred years.

I always recount the conclusion of our meeting at the Panama to my classes. Those exposed to your work in my courses, especially in ‘Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake,’ are often scared off by it, thinking you to be someone who requires them to toe the party line. I sometimes tell them that Frank knows that I am a Christian. They wonder how it is possible that we can even manage to have a conversation. It is then that I tell them what we discussed. What you desire is not agreement or compliance; in fact, it goes against all of those stories of righteousness that you tell – Ngawk Fei, the 108 outlaws on Leungshan, the sworn brothers Low Bay, Guan Yu, and Cheung Fei. What you want is a fight over the text. Criticism, you complain in the 1991 Aiiieeeee preface, is sorely lacking for much of Asian American literature. We are afraid to fight. Your words are thus like fire in my ears: sheathe the identity, draw your soul, read the text.

In this, I reflect on the question of party lines in Asian America. To speak in terms of ideology and partisanship seems to me to be the work of the jook sing, those who do not know and therefore must make stuff up. The mistake is to position your work, and the work in Aiiieeeee!, as an ideological faction in Asian America. Ideology, it seems to me, is the fantasy of the missionary. The martial forest, however, is not an ideological geography. It is the practice of righteousness and revenge.

Recently, Jin Yong died. He was a novelist based in Hong Kong much beloved by Chinese people around the world. He wrote stories of martial heroism, and his trilogy on the Condor Heroes is an extended meditation on Ngawk Fei, his ethic of righteousness, and his contempt for corruption. I grew up with these stories, along with the tales that my grandfather told me from the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West. I had thought about your statement in ‘Come All Ye’ about these stories circulating throughout Chinatown, and I just wanted to say that even for a suburban Christian kid like me, television, Chinese school, and grandparents mean that I too have no excuse. In my childhood, I understood Christianity to teach the same things as the Ngawk Fei kind of righteousness that you mention. It was not until junior high that I encountered a much more colonizing form of white evangelicalism that introduced me to the idea that I should pick between the two. In many ways, reading your work and having spoken with you rescued me from being a jook sing. You helped me to remember my childhood, and I must admit that I have spent more time than I care to admit recently re-watching the stories that I saw on television now on YouTube. My Cantonese is not as bad as I thought, and the more I watched, the deeper into the world I got. In fact, I found myself speaking more in Cantonese as a result recently.

My one regret in our correspondence is that I am so bad at writing back when you reply so quickly. It is so ‘mm ho yee see,’ which does not simply mean ‘sorry,’ but really refers to a ‘bad meaning/insight.’ Seeing the speed of your reply, I will try not to be so ‘mo yee hay,’ lacking in righteousness, in the future.

堅恆上

Respectfully submitted,
Justin

chonkmoonhunter.com

Dear Readers,

I received an email from Curtis Choy - he will be retiring his website by the end of the year. Please visit the site:

http://www.chonkmoonhunter.com

Frank Chin's blogsite here would not have been up had Curtis not suggested it and built v.1 for him. Please checkout Curtis' website and purchase his movies before they go away. Curtis made the feature-length documentary on Frank called What's Wrong With Frank Chin? and Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue, based on Frank's teachings. Furthermore, one of the top blog articles that gets the most hits in this blogsite is the interview with him here. When you read it, you'll see why it remains so popular.

(Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)

Curtis has dedicated his work in advancing the Asian American voice. He has recorded and been in momentous events that helped shape Asian America as we know it. I find myself lucky enough to know him and still be in contact with him. Please thank him and continue to view and support his works.

Eddie

******* UPDATE 9/22/2019 ***********

You can find many of Curtis Choy's materials in the Manila Town Heritage Foundation here.

TCG's Short Video on Frank Chin

The Theatre Communications Group interviewed Frank Chin for their "Legacy Leaders of Color" tribute videos.  It's quite entertaining and informative. Enjoy:

FRANK CHIN, Asian American Theatre Co. from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.

Viet Nguyen on Frank Chin

(photo of Viet Nguyen comes from NBC News)

In his critique of Wesley Yang's The Souls of Yellow Folk, Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Nguyen mentioned Frank Chin...

This Asian-American legacy in politics and art is invisible to Yang, who does not even mention Frank Chin, the writer who most forcefully dealt with the agonies of Asian-American manhood. Chin, who connected racial emasculation to the treatment of Asian-Americans as objects of “racist love” (as opposed to the “racist hate” directed against African-Americans), argued that Asian-American writing had to be a form of fighting. Yang flails rather than fights, which suggests that there is something inadequate about the Asian-American legacy for him. He may not be alone. His neglect of historical forebears and his almost exclusive focus on the personal is indicative of a generational shift in Asian-American thinking; revolution is not very fashionable today.

(HT: Calvin McMillin)

ATTN: COMMITTEE OF 100

October 30, 2018

COMMITTEE OF 100
257 PARK AVENUE SOUTH, 19TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, 10010


Dear Anonymous Committee:


I'm Frank Chin, a Chinaman writer.  I recommend you acquire a copy of just released Nisei Naysayer (from Stanford U Press), by Art Hansen and James Omura - it is the life of Nisei journalist (the only non-JACL journalist and hence a JACL pariah thru WWII); edited by noted historian Art Hansen.  Hansen notes every reference Jimmie makes - Jimmie, Art Hansen, and others note my presence - in Jimmie Omura's and the Nisei story of 1939 to 1972.

One hundred what?  What are you?  Not Chinese or anything Chinese or vaguely Asian?  Certainly not a lobby group interested in the education of Asians born in the United States.  And absolute contempt for Chinese children's literature that takes Far Mulan from children's chant to adult Liang Hongyu who grows up studying Far Mulan, and riding the Yellow River watered country with Han Zhisong in the world of fact and literature.

White man FDR (President Roosevelt, the spokesman of American) is racist and wrong - no Nisei Americans Born in America bombs Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Clinton and Obama are white racially wrong to replace Chinese CIV with Maxine Hong Kingston's Cameron House lies about Yellow men and women.  (Generations of removing boys and girls has killed the taste of Yellows for Yellows).

Obama is the first Black Pres. of the United States built by the White man, of the White man, for the White man, who runs the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

"That’s a dirty Yankee lie," Shane says in Shane.

And Jack Palance says, “PROVE IT.”

-PROVE IT ? –

Yellows have no Jack Palance. Yellows have no manhood. None at all. The Yellow men aren’t manly. Ask a Yellow woman. Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan. (Don’t forget Lisa See and White Mother Carolyn See, the wife of a Chinese who did her wrong, and writes about her life, becomes a critic on the L.A. Times, has a Chinese faking daughter with a million dollar book contract – who makes a fast buck on Vanity TV – million dollars later - today poof!).  There lives today only one Yellow with a Chinatown that helped him achieve office by office to Washington State Governor, twice. Then, higher and higher Clinton drafts Gary Locke to take the portfolio of Ambassador to China. The Chinese like him departmentally. If Gary Locke says FDR mucked the Japanese Americans up into Bettina Goering in Herman Goering forever – and Far Mulan is not tattooed, Maxine Hong Kingston’s version of Chinese CIV is false. Every American is morally obligated to read what was American history with the birth of George Washington in Virginia, and Lincoln’s birth in Kentucky. Will the President of the United States listen?

Gary Locke is the only Yellow to achieve the office by office Ambassordial Pres appointed high enough to be heard by the Pres. who appointed him.

I imagine that Gary Locke talks the US into dumping FDR’s stereotype of Japs, and dumping the JACL and the myth of Masaoka. He talks every White man to admit Whites like Maxine Hong Kingston’s White racist hate of everything and everyone Chinese better than real written Chinese children's songs and stories. White racists supported Kingston's white racist lies to please Pres. Clinton and Pres. Obama for fifty years in public schools before Kingston, Jade Snow Wong; and the first is Donaldina Chinatown's avenging angel attacking yellow man feeling up a frightened Yellow woman, and rescuing her, and keeping Chinese girls in Cameron House - The Ways of Ah-Sin, by Cameron House missionary become head of Chung Mei Home - where Chinese American boys born in America are taught to wear blackface sing for their captain, and dream of becoming President of China --

Once a Yellow man makes every White American gulp, look Yellows in the eye and clean themselves of the Masoaka- Kingston stink, and apologize that Yellow will have done the restored the honor of the first published, first edition of Wong Sam & Associates Chinese –English Phrase Book Wang Sam’s associates are translators for Chinese hauled into court – Publisher is Wells Fargo Express – 1872 -1879 - Once, is enough, but three times, Chinese style, would be nice.

That done, Yellows will be media equal with Blacks, Browns, Chicanos, Muslims, Native Americans, American Indians, Mexicans and all people under the sun and moon lucky enough to have color and a culture that goes with it.

Frank Chin
Writer


PS: August 25th the day Asian America went belly up and Asian America doesn't know and doesn't care and doesn't live - the lives that don't have the morals and ethics to exist in the written world. I ask my people to out their art and they proudly have none. I ask my art to out my people. There are none. I ask the art of my neighbors to help me, spark art in my people, on August 25th. Whoo! I get stories of White racism vs Jews, Irish, Blacks, native peoples of America, north and south. Everyone stays in thrall of their own, selves and lit, and none of mine, history lessons are brag not help, I have read a history lesson- - that's why I ask - art , you bitch! Where are my people? The media of the world condenses into George. George is all that's left of media life of the Asian American voice and news George. Take it away, George. Oh, no. TV forgets George? George forgets the people as fans? Uhh, George? George? Text of lit and TV demands the appearance of George Takei as Mr Sulu, apologizing for the White Racist lies about Frank Emi, and Heart Mt. Fair Play Committee at Frank Emi's grave in Los Angeles, covered as news by Los Angeles local and network news camera crews.

PPS: PBS - Yan Can Cook – series on Chengdu, China, licks what is written and eaten and waters Chinese CIV from childhood to who knows where? Whew! Saved by the bell of the wok. Bong! Why Chengdu? Remember Li Bing, turning the summer floods on the Min int the fertile Chengdu plains? The Romance of the 3 Kingdoms? Remember Bertolt Brecht's Commie white racist classic that suckered AAS at UCLA founders Yuji Ichioka, Emily Gee , Russell Leong, THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN? REMEMBER WHAT IS WRITTEN AND WHO WROTE IT. What is written is still written. Stand up for the peoples text. Common text is a people's identity and reason for being. The common texts have crossed languages with the stories and philosophies reaching cross the land and sea to round the world. No text of any peoples conspires with the White Man against the people till 1849 and the Chinese become the Yellow Peril to White women at night in the White man's newspaper prose of 1889.

Anna May Wong to Constance Wu?

(Constance Wu)

(October 3, 2018) 10AM - The Hagfish McConnell more haggy than before - ornamented by a shiny well coiffed ornamental oriental - wife Elaine Chao goddess of a new white enterprise (ornaments for Summer) Crazy Rich Asians. About to come on view - here comes Constance Wu, the too old to know-nothing like five-year old Shirley Temple with a charming adult vocabulary she plays - Fresh Off the Boat - is Eddie Huang’s phrase? - wha’hap to David Henry Hwang’s F. O. B.? Season 5 of Fresh Off the Boat? - the new generation of Hollywood pets - remember Lucy Liu the ‘yellow beauty’ on the lawyer show whose glance leaves men shuddering. She has a new show on CBS now. Then there was Bai Ling as Michael Wincott’s evil sister in Brandon Lee’s last performance in the 1994 movie The Crow. And down down to an adult dumb as child actor five yr old Shirley Temple who talks like a big person. A long long long way down from Sessue Hayakawa coming back to Hollywood that had shit on him, to boost Anna May Wong to first billing and the first eye to eye lusty acting between electric yellows in 1930’s Daughter of the Dragon.

(Eddie Huang)

Why do Asian American scholars and movie makers and historians not ask why? Why, Hayakawa, a Jap, did what he did for a chink? Was he that anxious to press his Jap lips on her Chinese lillies that he agreed to return to the scene of his humiliation? Or was the anxiety in Anna May Wong’s Lips?

(Sessue Hayakawa and Anna May Wong)

The Bessie Loo’s deal with the devil of the movies MGM’s Irving Thalberg to play Chinese in the movie of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth issued in 1937. From 1930 Sessue Hayakawa and Anna May Wong to 1968 Irene Tsu fighting off the lips of an uncredited yellow in the uniform of a North Viet officer, as Jack Soo’s kidnapped wife in the John Wayne directed movie The Green Berets.

Does Sessue Hayakawa’s lips ever seal a kiss with Anna May Wong’s luscious reds in Daughter of the Dragon? One must see the movie, a picture is worth a thousand words, says the paper in the fortune cookie.

Why do yellows tell the white man’s story of Yellow America, and none of their own Yellow stories of Yellows around the world to America? In 1999, does President Clinton have reasons other than the literary cultural anthropological accomplishments of Maxine Hong Kingston in creative writing in mind, when he awards her his President’s humanities medal? Does the President have Chinese-American advisers at the time of his decision? Advisors in Chinese literature? The Chinese know the Chinese lit Americans know/ Thanks to John Service of Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS/ But the Americans don’t know the White American lit out in the world of what is written.

The Japanese are right. The Chinese originality ran out with the Manchu Qing Dynasty in 1911. New ideas in the mold of Confucius brewed and wormed in Japanese soil where it grows into Japanese who knows what?

In America the Japs are taken over the self-contempt and dependence on inferior Yellows and express themselves in ornamental contentless consciously faceless art of nothing for 150 years. Our cowardly devotion to white racism is proved in our lack of art. Thanks for nothing FDR, Clinton, Obama, Trump and all the Yellow Ornaments.

FCC

Frank Chin at the Nisei Naysayer Book Signing

"Having studied assiduously the archival materials on WRA camps and painstakingly compiled an impressive oral historical record of pertinent participants and observers, [Frank] Chin is arguably the most knowledgeable person on draft resistance mounted from behind barbed wire."

- James Matsumoto Omura, Nisei Naysayer: The Memoir of Militant Japanese American Journalist Jimmie Omura (edited by Arthur Hansen), p. 149.

The following pictures were taken at the Japanese American National Museum regarding the book launch of Nisei Naysayer (buy your copy straight from the publisher here; Amazon link here).  Enjoy:

(Scholar and historian Arthur A. Hansen's opening remarks)

[Frank Chin and Irene Kuromiya (wife of the late Yosh Kuromiya) embrace]

(Hansen has Frank take a bow before the audience)

(Frank during the Q&A. Who asked that question?!)

(Frank, Irene and Arthur shaking hands)

For your interest, check out the following books:

Buy Nisei Naysayer here or here.
Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947 by Frank Chin
The Big Aiiieeeee! (read Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and of the Fake) by Frank Chin