Member-only story
Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston: Forever Locked in Debate
.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99954833
In Asian American Writing there is a war going on between men and women. It is an argument that places women in the position of popular minority writers in a white dominant culture, and men in the position of underdog trying to get a fair break in the world of words. This position began over twenty years ago with two wonderful Asian American writers: playwright and pioneer writer Frank Chin; and multicultural feminist and fiction writer Maxine Hong Kingston.
Frank Chin was an established Asian American writer before Maxine Hong Kingston came on to the scene. His plays were the first by an Asian American to get produced off-Broadway. He paved a road for a new generation of Asian American writers, and in the process, began to formulate his own arguments on feminized stereotypes of Chinese American men in white dominant culture, and the Christianization of Chinese-American History (Young, 100).
He feels that Asian American men are seen as “womanly, effeminate, devoid of all the traditionally masculine qualities of originality, daring, physical courage, creativity” (Cheung, 110). To right the historical record, Chin wants writers to pursue “generic purity and historical accuracy” (Cheung, 112). “Many Chinese American male writers paralleled Chin, who…
