The Chickencoop Chinaman & The Year of the Dragon

by Frank Chin

Book of Plays: 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.'

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Asian American, College, Theatre, School

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown. He attended college at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an American Book Award in 1989 for a collection of short stories, and another in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. He founded the Asian American Theatre Workshop, which became the Asian American Theater Company in 1973. He first gained notoriety as a playwright in the 1970s. His play The Chickencoop Chinaman was the first by an Asian American to be produced on a major New York stage. Stereotypes of Asian Americans, and traditional Chinese folklore are common themes in much of his work. Frank Chin has accused other Asian American writers, particularly Maxine Hong Kingston, of furthering such stereotypes and misrepresenting the traditional stories. Chin, during his professional career, has been highly critical of American writer, Amy Tan, for her telling of Chinese-American stories, indicating that her body of work has furthered and reinforced stereotypical views of this group.

In addition to his work as an author and playwright, Frank Chin has also worked extensively with Japanese American resisters of the draft in WWII. His novel, Born in the U.S.A., is dedicated to this subject.

Chin is also a musician. In the mid-1960s, he taught Robbie Krieger, a member of The Doors how to play the Flamenco guitar.

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

bored aff 😴😵‍💫

[alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[M F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read The Chickencoop Chinaman, and it was... an experience. Chin's a talented writer with a strong sense of rhythm; Tam's monologues are Beat-like, straight out of Ginsberg or Kerouac or Algren. According to the intro, Chin was interested in writing back against the stereotype that Asian American men were unmasculine, and I'd say he's successful. Tam's a real chirper, like some of the dudes I used to play hockey with, always antagonizing people and making innocuous situations awkward by running his mouth (to his credit, though, he's intelligent even when he's being a jerk). It's sometimes tough to follow everything he's saying because of all the slang and shortforms and allusions, not to mention the fact that I lack sufficient understanding of the sociocultural context he's writing within (and against), but you get the gist of things, and it doesn't really detract from the impact of the monologues. There's also a lot of important social commentary about the way Chinese Americans were (and have continued to be) treated by white America, such as in Tam's mocking references to Charlie Chan and in the contrast Chin draws between Tam and Tom, the model of assimilation.

All that's to the good, but the play itself feels sloppily thrown together, so that, even as each scene is pretty compelling, they don't really cohere into a complete vision, and the overall impression is a bit random for my tastes. It feels very much like the work of a talented writer who's not yet found the proper form for his ideas--like an early sketch from an excellent painter where many of the recognizable techniques and themes are there but in a nascent state. I'd also say that, in trying to counteract unmasculine stereotypes, Chin sometimes veers (fairly uncritically) into misogyny, and his depiction of Black characters (and Black Americans, more generally) is fraught with issues. He's not quite as bad as the Beats on that front, but he's also not that far off from the Beats, so there are some uncomfortable moments. For all of these reasons, though I enjoyed quite a few moments in the play, I don't know that I'd ever want to see The Chickencoop Chinaman performed.

Despite the above issues, Chin's energy, writing, and voice are intriguing, making me believe that his later work (e.g., Year of the Dragon, the other play in this book), will be much better than this early effort. By all accounts, he's one of the formative figures in Asian-American theatre, and there's all kinds of material in The Chickencoop Chinaman that hints at why. I'll come back to it when I hit virtual year 1974 in my American-lit read-through.

[Rebekah · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[james]

as means of consumption, i preferred 'the year of the dragon.' it felt very reminiscent of the great asian immigrant/asian american struggle that was very relatable.
i admire the analytical value of 'the chickencoop chinaman,' it feels very abstract compared to 'the year of the dragon,' so it was a harder read on my own, but i loved talking about it in class.

[Elise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not like the first play; the second was a little better. Interesting exploration of Chinese-American identity, but I couldn't really get into the style.

[aulani]

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