Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, “What is an
Asian American?” became an urgent question. The
editors of Aiiieeeee! proposed a particular “sensi-
bility” to unite a variety of people with different
religions, languages, and cultures under the um-
brella term Asian American. In Aiiieeeee! they in-
cluded works written in English by American-born
descendants of Asian immigrants and focused on
the criterion of “Asian-American sensibility.” This
“sensibility” features American nativity, exclusive
use of English, Asian Americans as intended audi-
ences, participation in the Asian-American heroic
tradition, and the reassertion of Asian-American
manhood as an objective.
Most significant, Chin’s notion of “Asian-
American sensibility” serves to authenticate Asian-
American writing by offering a clear distinction
between “the real” and “the fake” Asian-Ameri-
can literary expressions. To Chin, such successful
Asian-American authors as MAXINE HONG KINGS-
TON, AMY TAN, and DAVID HENRY HWANG are “fake”
but well received by mainstream America because
they feed the racist fantasy of white Americans.
The “real” Asian-American writing—non-Chris-
tian, non-feminine, and non-confessional—avoids
the genre of autobiography, celebrates Asian heroic
heritage, restores Asian-American manhood from
emasculation, and battles against white percep-
tions of Asian Americans. In a significant open-
ing essay of The Big Aiiieeeee!, “Come All Ye Asian
American Writers of the Real and the Fake,” Chin
delivers a 92-page harangue on the critical issue of
the real and the fake, claiming that Asian-Ameri-
can writing is a verbal battle of the real against the
fake, of authentic works against counterfeit texts.
Chin insists that the real has to refute the racist
assumption that “Asian culture is anti-individu-
alistic, mystic, passive, collective, and morally and
ethically opposite to Western culture.” Chin’s au-
thentication of Asian-American literary expres-
sion through immigrant memories and the Asian
heroic heritage became a controversial issue in
early Asian-American literary studies.
Bibliography
Li, David Leiwei. “The Formation of Frank Chin
and Formations of Chinese American Literature.”
Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspec-
tives, edited by Amy Ling, et al., 211–224. Pullman:
Washington State University Press, 1991.
McDonald, Dorothy Ritsuko. Introduction. The
Chickencoop Chinaman and the Year of the Dragon.
By Frank Chin. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1981.
Fu-jen ChenChin, Marilyn Mei Ling (1955– )
In “How I Got That Name: an essay on assimila-
tion,” the Chinese-American poet Marilyn Chin
reveals the family history behind her first name.
Born in Hong Kong in 1955, Chin immigrated with
her family to the United States as an infant. Her fa-
ther’s fascination with American blond movie stars
of the 1950s prompted him to rename one daugh-
ter after Marilyn Monroe and another after Jayne
Mansfield. Chin grew up in Portland, Oregon, but
has lived most of her adult life in California. The
poet received her B.A. in ancient Chinese literature
from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in- After Massachusetts, Chin entered the pres-
tigious M.F.A. program at the University of Iowa,
graduating in 1981. She completed postgraduate
work at Stanford University as a Stegner Fellow in
1984–1985. In an interview with Bill Moyers for
his Language of Life collection, Chin draws atten-
tion to her “hyphenated” identity and calls herself
“a leftist radical feminist, West Coast, Pacific Rim,
socialist, neo-Classical, Chinese American poet”
(Moyers 67).
Marilyn Chin has been associated with San
Diego State University since 1988, eventually be-
coming its M.F.A. program director. She has held
visiting positions at several universities including
UCLA, the University of Hawaii, Taiwan’s National
Donghwa University, and Australia’s University of
Technology. In 2003–2004 she was named a Rad-
cliffe Institute Fellow. The poet has received two
National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellow-
ships, four Pushcart Prizes, and a Mary Roberts
Rinehart Award. While Chin has published trans-
lations of Chinese literature and one play, The
Love Palace (2002), she considers herself primar-
42 Chin, Marilyn Mei Ling