Asian American Poet: Justin Chin

In my Asian American Culture class, I was assigned by my teacher to look for an Asian American poet and read/interpret their poems. To start looking for poets, I randomly googled "Asian American poets" and found a blog on blogspot about this one individual's recommendations for Asian American poets to read. Justin Chin was one of the names I found in the person's list so I decided to further google him to see if he had any works that I could read online. I found that he sold several books of poems on Amazon so I went on to Amazon and read reviews about his books. One of his books, titled "Bite Hard" got rave reviews and in the Amazon's review it said that he wrote from his "queer pan-Asian experience." Knowing that he faces discrimination because he is Asian and because he is gay really drew me into purchasing and reading his work. With the issue of Proposition 8 in the minds of many these days, I also felt that it was appropriate to learn and see thing's through a different point of view. I wouldn't consider myself homophobic but I wouldn't consider myself completely comfortable with the idea with LGBTQQ. Also, I also found that he was a San Francisco resident so I knew that I could possibly relate to some of his experiences. With all that said, I purchased "Bite Hard" from Amazon and once I received it, I began to read some of his poems. And he is real as it gets.

But before I go on, let's get the facts about this Asian American poet and Spoken Word artist.

According to Redroom.com (http://www.redroom.com/author/justin-chin/bio), Justin Chin was born in Malaysia, was raised and educated in Singapore, got brought into the United States through Hawaii, and now currently resides in San Francisco. He has published three books of poetry, Bite Hard (1997), Harmless Medicine (2001), and Gutted (2006). He was the finalist in the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and received the 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry by the Publishing Triangle. Not only did he publish books of poetry but he also wrote 2 non-fiction books, Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, and Pranks (1999) and Burden of Ashes (2002).

During the 90s Justin was a spoken word artist and performed seven of his works here and there. In 2002, he quit doing spoken word performances and he compiled all of the documents, scripts, and other items he used during that era and had it published in 2005 into a book named Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms. Currently he is working on a book which is titled Book 2 which consists of books that are found on the streets and remade, remodeled, and reworked into Artists books.

So how did Justin Chin get into poetry and spoken word? And how does he write his poems? On Redroom's website, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg has an in-depth conversation with Justin Chin. (More of this conversation can be read here: http://www.redroom.com/authornewsitem/intertext-conversation-justin-chin). Basically it the article it states that Justin Chin at first wanted to be a scientist but found interest in poetry through rock music and top forty pop. He explains that his schooling had a major influence in him, especially since one of the classes he took in Singapore was a Poetry class. He explicitly states, "English literature was a mandatory subject. Every year, we studied a Shakespearean play, a modern play, a modern novel, a local novel, and a smattering of poems from a smattering of poets. Not the best way to be exposed to literature, because so much of it was focused on getting the correct answers to essay questions. But I still loved it. I did horribly at it grade-wise, though." He further explains that much of the scientific language he uses as imagery in his poetry comes from his family upbringing. He further states that with being queer, "medical talk has become much of gay speak as any disco-dolly slang." Near the end of the interview with Pearlberg he explains his writing process. He states, "I write whenever I can. When I don't feel poorly, or tired, or sick. I write a lot in my head all though my day; I take notes in my Filofax and in my notebook. Usually I get totally obsessed with an idea, a phrase, or a word and want to use it in a piece of writing."

With all that said, check out his website: http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Justin/
It's really cool honestly and shows four random things. Especially click on 2 and 3 because it connects to concept of Book 2 where he uses other people's work, scratches out most of their work and leaves words and phrases to make a new poem.