|
Mongrel : Essays, Diatribes, Pranks | 
 enlarge | Author: Justin Chin
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
Buy New: $1.50
You Save: $10.45 (87%)
New (7) Used (17) Collectible (1) from $1.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 2109543
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0312195133
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5409
EAN: 9780312195137
ASIN: 0312195133
Publication Date: November 15, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: All books are new!!!! 100% guaranteed satisfation. Shipping within 1-2 business days.
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Since the early 1990s, Justin Chin has made a name for himself as a "Generation Q" poet, performance artist, essayist, actor, cultural commentator, wisecracker, and slammer. As a gay Chinese American with a punk, postmodern, and perpetually impudent attitude, Chin treats his outsider role with relish and aplomb. He first emerged in print with Bite Hard, a 1997 collection of poetry and performance pieces that won critical and popular acclaim. Mongrel, an assemblage of opinion pieces and essays, brings out a radically different side of Chin's talent. These 21 prose pieces map out his positions and thoughts on everything from the best way to eat pancakes to the lure of firing guns, from "rice queens" (Caucasian men attracted to Asian men) to the removal of anal fissures. Chin takes on all topics fearlessly--his dissection of professional white Buddhists is simultaneously shockingly flippant and profoundly insightful--and he always manages to surprise or startle. Sometimes he is simply playful, as in "After Yoko" (in which he maps out various art installations with names like "Dead Fag Piece"), or deadly serious, as when he discusses, in "Death of the Castro," the meaning and limitations of a gay ghetto for a multiracial community. Throughout, Chin manages to steer clear of predictable politics, excessive personal angst, or a smarmy hipper-than-thou tone. Mongrel is a smart, witty, perceptive--and sometimes disturbing--tour through the life of a young gay man who can deliver not only careful observation and critical discussion but also a laugh or a punch on every page. --Michael Bronski
Product Description
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.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Savage Humor, Serious Intent in Memorable Collection June 12, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mongrel is an appropriate title for this collection, which covers a melange of topics and does not fit comfortably within one category. It is not humor, cultural analysis, Asian-American memoir or a queer political tome, but contans elements of all of these.
In fact the blurring of categories seems deliberate, since most of the essays touch on uncomfortable questions of who fits into what category and how well they fit. The best essays in the book return again and again to this theme, exploring the intersection between ethnicity and orientation, class and gender.
Chin's style ranges from family memoir to straightforward reporting, from parody to mediation, and his topics include everything from poetry slams to more than you EVER wanted to know about anal fissures.
While the humorous pieces can be very funny, the best pieces in the book are straightforward reporting and analysis. "Saved" is an indepth look at the "ex-gay" movement. In "Smile" Chin writes about the sex industry and sex tourism in Thailan. He provides a compelling mix of detail on how the gay sex clubs operate, and analysis of the complicated blend of economics, politics and personal choices that fuels the sex industry.
While this collection is somewhat dated now (the book came out in 1999 and collected pieces written for several years before that), much of what he has to say still rings true, and the rest still provides a good time capsule of 90s-era queer writing and concerns.
Uneven, but Unpretentious Wisdom August 7, 1999
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
I found that this "best of" collection lacked some connecting tissue as evidenced by the weaker pieces embedded among more memorable and noteworthy essays. Yet the book delivered what it promised: the insightful, humorous perspective of a class and race conscious social commentator. A young writer (in both age and publication track record), Chin is a talent to watch. Once he begins to move away from sexuality-centered writing, I think he will discover a wealth of ingenuity and thought in his own work.
 A wondrous, devious little book, full of itself, yes, but May 14, 1999
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mongrel is a wondrous, devious little book, full of itself, yes, but also full of innovative insights about being a diasporic Chinese in white America and a contrarian gay in a politically correct Bay Area in love with it self too much. I especially like his wry take on Singapore as a homey mall (his first home), and on his trip through the whitey south on a shoestring poet's budget. Justin Chin is a legend in Hawai'i, where I write and teach, and now I see why; and he should send Morgan Blair an inscribed copy of his book so she (one of his teachers)can see that he remembers her amid the postmodern muck of it all.
|
|
|
. | |
