Works by
Justin Chin
(Performance Artist, Poet)

Essays

• Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, Pranks (1998)
  In a time when memoirs are often less than they claim to be and essays do not say enough, Justin Chin breaks onto the scene with a collection that is a combination of confession, tirade, journalism, and practical joke.Mongrel is a cross-section of Chin's imagination and experiences that calls into question what it means to be an Asian-American in San Francisco, the effect your family will always have on you, and the role sexuality plays in your life. Whether it be Internet pornography or family history, Chin manages to dig deep and uncover not only the truths of everyday life, but also the absurdities that surround them.Mongrel is an exploration and distillation of the experiences and imagination of a gay Asian-American whose sensibilities were formed by the maelstrom of '80s American pop culture. A unique collection from a brash, funny new voice.

• Burden of Ashes (2002)
  A literary dreamscape in which the landscapes of childhood, homelands, bodies, lovers, and desires succumb to whimsy, revision, and denial. With wild grace, Chin bounds through actual events and imagined outcomes-in a place where killing snakes, stern discipline, family pets, and childhood vacations share equal time with unrequited love, the mournful specters of ex-lovers, imagined passions, and the enigmatic power of a good kiss-reconciling what is lost, taken away, denied, outgrown, left behind, survived, remembered, and reclaimed.

Plays

• Go, or, The Approximate Infinite Universe of Mrs Robert Lomax
  Orientalist fantasies as seen through the characters of Suzie Wong, Robert Lomax and the Thai boy he left for her.

• Attack Of The Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (2005)
  As a performance artist, Justin Chin has created eight full-length solo performance works and several shorter works, which have been presented nationally and abroad. Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms is a collection of these performance art texts, along with documents and scripts, that represent Chin’s performance work from 1993-2001. Whether playing native, tourist, or other, the performer questions our--as well as his own--assumptions, prejudices, and consumption of cultural beings and commodities. These works explore themes of sexuality, of Asian and of queer bodies, hybrid forms of culture, belonging, and the loss, recovery, and reconstruction of home, homeland, and history. These works are by turns coolly ironic, or bratty and comic, or poignant and mournful, or unbelievably borderline psychotic.

Poetry

• Bite Hard (1997)
  "Bite Hard, a collection of poetry, fiction, and performance pieces by Justin Chin, weaves together a vision of otherness that is unique in gay writing. Chin, who was born in Malaysia, raised in Singapore, and is now living in San Francisco, writes from queer pan-Asian experience: outsiderness times two. Whether describing a series of bad ex-boyfriends (he has had seven named Michael, each worse than the one before) or being pursued by "rice queens" (white men interested only in Asian lovers), Chin's authorial power resides in his ability to articulate humor as well as rage in the reality of what it means to be an Asian American homosexual in a country that valorizes Caucasian heterosexuality. Witty, smart, and sexy, Bite Hard is the work of a young artist finding his voice with passion and intelligence." -- Amazon.com

• Harmless Medicine -- Finalist, 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry
  Marked by maturity and poetic vision, Harmless Medicine is fiercely devoted to the margins of queer life in the generation after the first wave of the AIDS epidemic. In more than 40 pieces, Chin fearlessly delivers everything from his first exposure to science (“Magnified”) to a mail order fantasy experience (“I Buy Sea Monkeys”); from backroads travel in Asia (“Little Everest in Your Palm”) to the plight of immigrants in America (“The Men’s Restroom at the INS Building”). Chin’s brutal honesty and sharp humor frame a profound and original collection.

• Gutted (2006) -- Finalist, 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry
  While trying to make sense of this ever-churning, terror-filled world, poet Justin Chin found himself traveling repeatedly home to Southeast Asia-a region unnerved and raging with SARS and the Avian Flu-to help care for his father who had suddenly been declared terminally ill with cancer. In addition to his father's illness, Chin was managing his own health and medical annoyances and preparing for a looming US citizenship test. At the beginning of this difficult period, Chin quietly vowed not to speak publicly about his troubles until they had been suitably resolved. These poems mark the end of that resolution. Gutted is a document of growing older-a massively moving work of grief, loss, comfort, illness, and resolve-imbued with Chin's unique screwy perspective, ever-defective grace, and scabrous humor.

See also:

• PROSODIA #3 (1993)