Remembering Performance Artist and Poet Justin Chin

 Irvine -  Over the holiday break came sad news of the passing 24 December 2015 of a powerful gay Asian voice, that of the performance artist and poet Justin Chin.  Born in Malaysia, he grew up in Singapore and subsequently emigrated to the United States.

Justin Chin

In 1999, I interviewed him perhaps when he was already a rising and powerful alternative voice, by phone from San Francisco where he was ultimately based after a detour in Hawaii.  His interview delves into controversial issues (he first had sex when he was 12), Bill Clinton's sexual liaisons and impeachment, oral sex, Asian identity and small press publishing.  The original interview was webcast in January 1999 on KUCI's Subversity Show, in RealAudio (remember that format?).  I've converted it to mp3 and uploaded it to the KUCI server.

Listen and remember him! I shall miss his biting and raw literary voice.  -  Daniel C. Tsang.
  
To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online reformatted podcast of my 1999 interview with Justin,  click on:

See also:
Lambda Literary remembrance.
Obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle by its book editor.
KQED report on his passing.
SF Weekly earlier account.
Poetry Foundation profile.

The original press release announcing his then-forthcoming show appearance is as follows:

Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 23:44:35 -0800 (PST)

Peformance artist/Author on Subversity webcast

Irvine -- Subversity, a KUCI public affairs radio program, this Tuesday features an interview with gay Asian Justin Chin, the author of "Mongrel," a new book of "essays, diatribes and pranks" from St. Martin's Press. The show airs from 5-6 p.m. on Tuesday, January 19, 1999, on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is also Webcast live at kuci.org:8080 The topic: "Performance artist as writer." Chin is also a performance artist with a long list of achievements. His earlier work was Bite Hard (Manic D Press), a finalist in the Firecracker Alternative Book awards and the Lambda Literary Awards. His writings have also appeared in Queer 13 (Rob Weisbach Books), Best American Gay Fiction 3 (Little, Brown), Flesh And The Word 4 (Plume), and Men On Men 5: New Gay Writing (Plume), among others.
His solo performances, described as "the raw stuff of serious risk taking," (San Francisco Bay Times), include "And Judas Boogied Until His Slippers Wept," "Go, or, The Approximate Infinite Universe of Mrs. Robert Lomax," "Born," "These Nervous Days," "Holy Spook," and "Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms." He has performed his work nationally, including at Highways and East-West Players in L.A; P.S. 122 and Dixon Place in N.Y.; Josie's, Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, the LAB, the Asian Art Musuem, and the SF Art Institute in San Francisco; the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival.
Along with Dan Schott, he wrote and co-directed Downloads, an experimental video documentary that was screened at film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, London, and Amsterdam. Other collaborations include Cockfight, a performance work with L.A. performance artist Hung Nguyen.
Chin received fellowships and grants from the California Arts Council, the Djerassi Artist Residency, PEN American Center, and PEN Center USA West, and the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. In 1996, he was awarded a "Goldie" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in their annual awards honouring local artists. Chin was on the 1995 and 1996 San Francisco National Poetry Slam teams.
Chin will be interviewed by show host Daniel C. Tsang. Listeners can call (949) 824-5824 to chat with Chin during the show, or send us comments or questions via e-mail to subversity@kuci.org.

Squared: Director Hieu Tran Challenges Queer Asian Stereotypes

  An important breakthrough short is screening at the Vietnamese Film Festival at Anaheim GardenWalk's UltraLuxe Cinema.  "Squared," directed, written and produced by Hieu Tran successfully challenges conventional views of Queer Asian males sexual practices and preferences.

To hear our Subversity Online interview with Hieu Tran (left), click here.

Turning conventional views on their head, the beautifully photographed 15-minute film, finished last October, portrays a buff Vietnamese American (Wally, played by Ethan Le Phong) who picks up buff Caucasian American (Dr. Tate Middleton, played by Yamil Jaiman) and both discover in bed that they are "tops". 

U don't bottom?

As the two characters (CUTEAZNBOI and TOPDAWG) confront that dilemma, they proceed to see who is better endowed.

Viewers don't get to see actual genitalia but the film has a surprise (watch it to find out).  It also leads to a wrestling match to see who is the stronger (more masculine?) guy.

We asked in our interview with the director why he made this film; Hieu Tran tells us it's to challenge long-lasting stereotypes about Asian queers who are almost invariably depicted as "bottoms" or submissive in bed.   He tells us that Jamil Jaiman, who is straight in real life, gives his first kiss to a man Ethan Le Phong) in the film.  Shot in the director's lodgings in the Hillcrest district of San Diego, the film manages, in just 15 minutes, to cover a lot of ground - and is an early indication of the brilliance of this young filmmaker, who would like to make films but also photograph them.

Born in Danang, Vietnam, he came to the U.S. at age 4, and unlike other Vietnamese American filmmakers from Southern California, is perfectly happy to try to break into the film industry here in the United States, and not in his native land.  I must say with this short his prospects look good. 

Lovers in bed

The short is paired with a feature film, Nadine Truong's "Someone I Used to Know," screening at 5 pm on Sunday, 13 April, 2014 at the Vietnamese Film Festival, UltraLuxe Cinema, Anaheim Garden Walk, 321 Katella Avenue, Anaheim. - Daniel C. Tsang

Remembering Queer Asian Activist & Policy Analyst Alain Dang

At my age I often come across obituaries of people I know these days, but the news today circulating on Facebook about the tragic death of Alain Dang really was shocking.

A youngish 37, he reportedly went in the hospital Monday with "flu-like" symptoms - and died just hours later on Tuesday afternoon, 4 February 2014 at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. Unbelievable!

Added: 

Cousin Johnny Phan posts on Facebook: 

Everyone is welcome to come celebrate Alain Dang's life as we are planning a memorial for Alain on Wednesday, February 12 at 5:00 pm. at Oak Hill Funeral Home in San Jose (Chapel of the Oaks). Alain will be buried on Thursday, February 13 at 10:00 am. at Oak Hill Funeral Home (open to all).

In lieu of any flowers or gifts, the family is asking you make an online donation to any of the organizations dear to Alain. Here are three suggestions and let them know the donation is in Alain Dang's memory:

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute
National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance
API Equality of Northern California 

From the web, I've also found this: 
Memorial "guest book".

His Facebook page contains dozens of tributes from friends, classmates, relatives and activists he impacted across the country. I feel myself honored to have known him from the time he spent as an undergraduate at UC Irvine where he was well known as a student government activist, an anti-Prop 209 campaigner, and for spearheading the successful drive (with the UCI Vietnamese American Coalition) to kick Nike T-shirts off campus.  As he wrote in an autobiographical essay, he learned about Nike products being made in Vietnamese sweatshops from an episode of 48 Hours.  In the boycott Nike campaign, UCI students sent over 1,000 letters to Nike CEO Phil Knight, leading UCI to cancel its apparel contract with Nike.  He was "hyper-involved" in student government as he would tell me in a later interview.  In fact he learned about community involvement as a student in UCI's Social Ecology program.  According to UCI Asian American Studies Chair Jim Lee, who teaches an Asian American Autobiographies class, he (Lee) has used Alain Dang's chapter in that class.

Born 24 June 1976 in San Jose, Alain Đặng Anh Tuấn grew up in a Vietnamese immigrant family - his parents came from Vietnam in the 1960s, which was earlier than most Vietnamese immigrants.  

In 2007, while living in New York, he was lead author on a national study on the lives at the margins of Asian/Pacific queer folk and for that I did an interview with him for my KUCI's Subversity Show, on that report.  You can hear his soft voice in that June 18, 2007 interview, and remember the gentle, soft-spoken, deliberative, and unassuming guy he was.

During the interview he reveals it wasn't till his junior or senior year when he "came out".  As he explained, he was "very independent" and didn't avail himself of the the resources then available in those pre-chatroom days at UCI.  His parents knew him as an activist (but not necessarily as a gay one - they never talked about that) and had embraced that, even encouraging him to run, one day, for office.  "What kind of Asian parents actually encourage their kids to run for office?" he told me then.

Prior to that interview, I drafted this profile of him:

"Alain Dang is a policy analyst with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. His research focuses on the intersections of race, sexual orientation, community building, and public policy. He co-authored Living in the Margins: A National Survey of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, Asian Pacific American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People: A Community Portrait and Black Same-Sex Households in the United States: A Report from the 2000 Census for the Task Force Policy Institute.

"His autobiographical chapter is featured in Kevin Kumashiro's Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian Pacific American Activists, published by Harrington Park Press. He and his work have been featured in a variety of media across the country, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle , Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AsianWeek, The Advocate, World Journal, News India Times, Filipino Reporter, Hyphen Magazine and The Western Journal of Black Studies, among others. In addition, he has traveled the country speaking at conferences, colleges and universities. He holds a BA in Environmental Analysis & Design from UC Irvine (Social Ecology) and an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA."

Since then, of course, he has moved on to greater heights; at his passing he chaired the Roads Commission in Santa Clara, California and served on the Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee of the Santa Clara Valley Authority.

In sadness, I bid Alain farewell -  a decent guy who fought the good fight.  A huge loss.

-- Daniel C. Tsang.

Updated 6, and 10 February 2014; revising date of passing;  also adding his Vietnamese name and date of birth.
Further tributes: NGLTF,  NQAPI