The Chickencoop Chinaman \u0026 The Year of the Dragon by Frank Chin

The Chickencoop Chinaman \u0026 The Year of the Dragon Reviews

• 
  Dusty

  When he wrote Chickencoop Chinaman, Frank Chin had a very particular goal in mind: To counteract the stereotype that Asian American men are "effeminate" and therefore not nearly as "dangerous" as America's other racial minorities. This purpose it accomplishes in spades: Tam Lam, the play's protagonist, is about as foul-mouthed, sexually predatory and macho as characters come. Like a big-balled rooster in a henhouse, Lam literally crows "buck buck bagaw".
  
  Of course, Lam's homophobic masculinism could lead us to say, with much justification, that although original the play has aged badly. Indeed, it would surprise me to see it revived for a new Broadway run anytime in the near future, but maybe it's not unsalvageable, even in our present era of Political Correctness: All it'd need is a lead actor and a director who could let Tam Lam exhibit his racism and sexism without allowing the production to roundly extol him. Then again, that would be a whole different play...
  
  Note: My "three stars" pertain only to Chickencoop Chinaman. I have not (yet) read the second play printed in this edition.
• 
  Anna

  4 stars for year of the dragon only (i didn't read chickencoop chinaman) this was actually pretty good, i ended up enjoying it more than i thought i would.
  
  there are a lot of interesting points here and contrary to some of the other reviews (again, only speaking about year of the dragon) i actually think the language holds up over time. i didn't think it was difficult to read in terms of the writing at all. it's a short play on a pretty condensed timeline, and i think a lot of chin's points about the white expectation of chinatown and immigrant spaces versus the reality, as well as the disillusionment of the first generation and the generational gap are all explored in a really sobering way. i don't think he necessarily presents as nuanced a view on gender as some of his contemporaries, but i still think it's a good read and i would recommend it.
• 
  zirah

  bored aff 😴😵‍💫
• 
  alex

  2.5
• 
  Anita

  Recently I've been thinking about """problematic""" literature and censorship and """Bearing Witness""" and here we are reading Heart of Darkness and Huck Finn (I think) but also tryna ban the Mikado (s/o kat) and being angry about Mickey Rooney being a ching-chong-chink in Breakfast @Tiffs. Part of me is like, WHAT'S GOOD, FRANK CHIN (@nicki @miley) but part of me is also angry and sad that the feminization of asian males led to this misogynistic homophobic play justification of Asian-Male-ness (what's good @eddiehuang!!!!!!) WHO CAN I TRUST?!
  
  So Mam was saying when she watched the mikado (vs when R watched the Mikado) there's a difference in how they process it ie perhaps AsAms process it as hello why is this violence being reenacted on stage as some sort of consciousness-raising when I feel like this All The Time, versus maybe it's "educational" for other people to watch it and be like oh god is this problematic and be a little uncomfortable (AS LONG AS THEY'RE FORCED TO BE A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE!) u gotta
  
  And I was thinking this as I read the book and then near the end of the play one of the characters Charley Popcorn, black non-dad of Ovaltine The Boxer whom two of the Asian leads attempt to lasso into their documentary, watches this guy Tom Lam (the "model minority" Chinese guy who's writing a book called Soul on Rice like a half-rate eldridge? basically the imitation crab of the play, the Asian that whites want Asians to be) argue with Tam Lum (angry Chinese guy who mocks Helen Keller and is just kind of mean but 100% rejects the Asian that he's supposed to be). And Popcorn goes: "You know, I'm having a wonderful time. I really am. Really opens my eyes."
  
  is that frank trying to teach us how to read this? or is it just a throwaway line? And who could really know? Year of the Dragon is similarly painful. Idk anymore what to think.
  
  my fried rice is now burning on the stove bc i took too long to express my feelings goodbye
• 
  William

  meh. unmemorable and represents an attempt to portray the Asian man as hypermasculine and angry vs. the emasculated effeminate Asian man. It ultimately fails in this attempt by preventing more complex representations of Asian American men, particularly those in the LGBTQ+ community and the complete exclusion of women in this work of activism.
• 
  krystal

  Racist, sexist, homophobic. But a good primer into the good Asian vs. bad ch!nk binary, reeking but honest in its hypermasculinity and attempt to find or replicate fatherhood.
• 
  Rebekah

  I don't really know if these are plays that can be "read," because the way Chin uses language is nearly incomprehensible. Both of these plays are incredibly difficult to read, not because of their content, but because for whatever reason, no human speech pattern emerges and so trying to string the words together just create a soundless mass. A cold read of any of the speeches in either of these plays would be an unmitigated disaster. And while these plays are infinitely important to the Asian American theatrical canon and there's so much scholarship surrounding not just the plays but Chin himself and his self-mythologizing view of Chinese in America history, his constant bitter feuds with Chinese American women writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, as well as any other Asian American writer he deemed assimilationist, the plays themselves are almost in another language. Although understandably very angry, Chin's move to combat cultural emasculation of Asian men by leaning hard into toxic hypermasculinity without nuance doesn't let these plays withstand the test of time and they certainly aren't any fun to read.
• 
  Esperanza

  frank chin’s obsession with hypermasculinity needs to be studied
• 
  aulani

  genuinely so much to analyze from both plays but all i can think is “haha. cock.”