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 performance art texts, documents, and scripts. These writings collect the author's performance work from 1993-2001. Whether playing native, tourist, or other, Chin 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.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"...no subject is off-limits as Chin humorously explores the hot buttons of sex, class, race, and even proctology!" -- Tim Miller, performance artist and author of Body Blows
"A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance." -- Chay Yew, playwright and director
"The first time I saw Justin perform he blew me away. I couldnÂ’t stop watching. I couldnÂ’t stop listening." -- Philip Kan Gotanda, playwright and author of No More Cherry Blossoms
A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance. --Chay Yew, playwright and director
Justin Chin joyously picks at the scab of these times to peek at what our flesh really looks like underneath…no subject is off-limits… --Tim Miller, performance artist and author of Body Blows
The first time I saw Justin perform he blew me away. I couldn't stop watching. I couldn't stop listening. --Philip Kan Gotanda, playwright and author of No More Cherry Blossoms
Justin Chin joyously picks at the scab of these times to peek at what our flesh really looks like underneath…no subject is off-limits… --Tim Miller, performance artist and author of Body Blows
A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance. --Chay Yew, playwright and director
"A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance." -- Chay Yew, playwright and director
"The first time I saw Justin perform he blew me away. I couldnÂ’t stop watching. I couldnÂ’t stop listening." -- Philip Kan Gotanda, playwright and author of No More Cherry Blossoms
A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance. --Chay Yew, playwright and director
Justin Chin joyously picks at the scab of these times to peek at what our flesh really looks like underneath…no subject is off-limits… --Tim Miller, performance artist and author of Body Blows
The first time I saw Justin perform he blew me away. I couldn't stop watching. I couldn't stop listening. --Philip Kan Gotanda, playwright and author of No More Cherry Blossoms
Justin Chin joyously picks at the scab of these times to peek at what our flesh really looks like underneath…no subject is off-limits… --Tim Miller, performance artist and author of Body Blows
A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry, and performance. --Chay Yew, playwright and director
About the Author
Justin Chin is the author of two collections of poetry, Harmless Medicine and Bite Hard, and two collections of essays, Burden of Ashes and Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks. Harmless Medicine was a finalist at the 2002 Bay Area Book Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, the Publishing Triangle Awards, and the Asian American Literary Awards. He lives in San Francisco.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Original and Thought-Provoking Social Commentary,
By Alex Renault "brushburn7" (Bellefonte, PA.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Paperback)
Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms is Justin Chin's record of his career as a queer performance artist, 1994-2001. Although the collection lacks essential elements of a live performance, it is nonetheless a thought-provoking body of work revolving around one man's social commentary on Asian stereotypes. This includes stinging commentaries on GLBT attitude toward Asian culture including the most pervasive-- the sexual.
Reading Margaret Cho's thoughts in print would likewise be missing her live presence which is best captured in a theatre, even though her DVDs are excellent. But both performers take exception to objectifications of their heritage. I doubt the artist would appreciate the comparison (it could be perceived as stereotyping in itself), but both fiercely accuse their witnesses of lazy thinking. Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms is educational as well as entertaining but makes one uncomfortable at times when it pinpoints stereotypes we do not realize many of us embrace. Chin's record is a good example of the evolution of the artist as his work progresses from spotty nuances to better insights into his own anger about how our culture crams human beings into boxes instead of looking deeper. I doubt the author would ever perform in Savannah, Georgia, but I would trip over myself running to buy tickets.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profuse Bleeding: The Performance Art of Justin Chin,
By
This review is from: Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Paperback)
With "Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms", after four books, two volumes of poetry and two collections of essays, Justin Chin delivers more of the same: incendiary art. This new collection chronologically compiles a decades worth of performance art. The primary question is: can the text of performance communicate as readily on the page as on the stage? Of course it can. Those familiar with Chin's writings know he's visceral and probing; some readers might worry that a performance without the necessary physical presence (or in Chin's case visual assault) might necessarily be diluted or sterile. Nope. The prose and poetry here possess a stream-of-conscious quality that makes the political digestible while the personal is revealing, cathartic, and occasionally both funny and frightening.
I'm not sure if prospective readers will embrace or cringe over a book of performance art -I've always thought of Justin Chin as a performance artist who wrote, and was surprised to discover here that he's a writer who performs. The distinction is telling. As a writer delving into a different medium, whatever might succeed or fail on a stage, Chin's already past proving he's capable of bringing ideas to a reading audience. Now lets face it, performance art has a bad reputation, so it's worth noting the author's lament over the "media representation of the stereotypical performance artist, either wailing like a banshee and throwing food at the audience or being pretentious and meaning-challenged, scoffing at idiots who did not get The Meaning when there was none." And this isn't Chin being touchy -rather he's simply disarming any preconceived notions readers might bring to the book. The introduction begins as a humorous family discussion about his performance art and the 90's in general, some twenty five years in the future. Just as I was getting ready to enjoy some fun, cynically faux-hindsight he much too abruptly switches gears, awkwardly jumping into a quick, useful dissertation on the nature of the work to follow. This would have been a great opportunity to channel his wit into an Orwellian vein, but I'm guessing the author was simply in a rush to get on with it and let the performances speak for themselves. The pieces host a variety of themes, personal and political, the gay community and AIDS, race and nationality, sexuality and being. The hypnotic rhythm of most performances carry the reader along; some portions come across as telling, sing-songy surreal bedtime stories for a community all too ready to nod off when certain issues challenge it's all-inclusive self-image. The poems here serve both as his Songs of Innocence (heard through a walkman) and his Songs of Experience (learned in clubs, clinics and public toilets). Some performances are punctuated by slides; those that possess text are an addition to the piece on the page, as in one performance where slides coolly dissect the performer-as-go-go boy, a voice-over serving as his subconscious, offering bored, meandering thoughts about shopping for dinner. The slides that are pictorial are not reproduced in the book but described; where this must certainly have enhanced live performances, on the printed page it's an unwarranted roadblock, especially when things heat up in Chin's kitchen. And food plays a big roll in his performances -it's one of the primary ingredients he uses while boiling away stereotypes. He also uses his own blood. He allows blood to run down his arm as he removes the syringe. He mixes it with rice and eats it. He adds his blood to milk and drinks it. And with the focus on the body some readers will likely invoke Theory to get a handle on Chin's work. Not me. Reading this book resurrected memories of The Dead Kennedys, Crass and the like, seminal punk bands who made music that was (is) the opposite of pretty because often times that is where the truth lies: just beyond the acceptable. Plus, synchronicity being what it is, I was listening to P.I.L.'s This Is Not A Love Song while reading his invective This Is Not The Joy Luck Club, though just as I got comfortable with the comparison he started in on ABBA, reminiscing about 80's pop and coming out issues painful and hilarious, in a performance that could easily stand with the best parts of his essay collection/memoir, "Burden of Ashes." And naturally some pieces work better than others.The book closes with an unfinished work that would have been really intriguing if revisited and fully developed. Certainly there's enough challenging content that some things are as likely to offend as provoke. But if you think Justin Chin's dropped the ball here or there, I can only offer a gentle reminder that he is, after all, juggling hand grenades. Originally published in Books To Watch Out For, '06
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