Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Yunte Huang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2010

Shortlisted for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography and the 2011 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book: "An ingenious and absorbing book, that provides a convincing new mode for examining the Chinese experience through both Chinese and Western eyes. It will permanently change the way we tell this troubled yet gripping story."—Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China and Return to Dragon Mountain

On a balmy July night in 1904, a wiry figure sauntered alone through the dim alleys of Honolulu’s Chinatown. He strolled up a set of rickety steps and into a smoky gambling den ringing with jeers of card sharks and crapshooters. By the time anyone recognized the infamous bullwhip dangling from his hand, it was too late. Single-handedly, the feared, five-foot-tall Hawaiian cop, Chang Apana, had lined up forty gamblers and marched them down to the police station.

So begins Charlie Chan, Yunte Huang’s absorbing history of the legendary Cantonese detective, born in Hawaii around 1871, who inspired a series of fiction and movie doubles that long defined America’s distorted perceptions of Asians and Asian Americans. In chronicling the real-life story and the fraught narrative of one of Hollywood’s most iconic detectives, Huang has fashioned a historical drama where none was known to exist, creating a work that will, in the words of Jonathan Spence, “permanently change the way we tell this troubled yet gripping story.”

Himself a literary sleuth, Huang has traced Charlie Chan’s evolution from island legend to pop culture icon to vilified, postmodern symbol, ingeniously juxtaposing Apana’s rough-and-tumble career against the larger backdrop of a territorial Hawaii torn apart by virulent racism. Apana’s bravado prompted not only Earl Derr Biggers, a Harvard graduate turned author, to write six Charlie Chan mysteries but also Hollywood to manufacture over forty movies starring a grammatically challenged detective with a knack for turning Oriental wisdom into singsong Chinatown blues.

Examining hundreds of biographical, literary, and cinematic sources, in English and in his native Chinese, Huang has pursued the trail of Charlie Chan since the mid-1990s, searching for clues in places as improbable as Harvard Yard, an Ohio cornfield, a weathered Hawaiian cemetery, and the Shanghai Bund. His efforts to refashion the Charlie Chan legend became a personal mission, as if the answers he sought would reshape his own identity—no longer a top Chinese student but an immigrant American eager to absorb the bewildering history of his adopted homeland.

“With rare personal intensity and capacious intelligence,” Huang has ascribed a starring role to “the honorable detective,” one far more enduring than any of his wisecracking movie parts. Huang presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. 35 black-and-white photographs and illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

Described as a "heady mixture of scholarship, essay and memoir" (Washington Post), Charlie Chan energetically deconstructs the social and cultural milieu of the fictional detective as it examines the people and events that contributed to his popularity. Huang interweaves a vast number of historical and cultural topics in this sprawling work, including the class system of prestatehood Hawaii, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the "Yellow Peril," American literature, and Hollywood. Critics praised Huang's extensive research, careful analysis, and his willingness to use his own experiences as a Chinese immigrant to examine racism, exploitation, and assimilation--a deeply personal but surprisingly cheerful journey into his past. As provocative as it is engaging, Charlie Chan will captivate fans of all genres.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The Charlie Chan we know from the movies (played by Swedish actor Warner Oland) had two strands to his DNA: E. D. Biggers’ immensely popular Charlie Chan novels and the actual man on whom Biggers based his tales. The model for Biggers’ canny Honolulu detective was Chang Apana, who rose from Hawaiian paniolo (cowboy) in the 1890s to Humane Society officer to Honolulu cop and detective in the early twentieth century. Chang’s beat concentrated on the notorious gambling dens, scenes and seeds of drugs and violence in the labyrinth of Honolulu’s Chinatown. Huang, who was born in China and is a professor of English at the University of California, brings a wealth of perspective on the treatment of Chinese, both historically and in fiction, to this work. Readers will learn a great deal about how the Chinese fared as plantation workers in Hawaii, about Hawaiian history, about Chang, about Biggers, and about the meaning of the Chan oeuvre, both books and movies. Huang also works in his own story of immigrating to the U.S., which is both stirring and illuminating. This is a beautifully written analysis of racism and an appreciation of Charlie Chan and Chang Apana, made credible by Huang’s background. As Huang says, As a man from China, a Chinese man come to America, I say: ‘Chan is dead! Long live Charlie Chan!’ --Connie Fletcher

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (August 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393069621
• ISBN-13: 978-0393069624
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 7 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #536,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

YUNTE HUANG is a Professor of English at the University of California; he has also taught at Harvard. The author of "Charlie Chan," "Transpacific Imaginations," "Transpacific Displacement," and "CRIBS," Huang, born in China, now lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Honorable Detective in Racial and Social History October 15, 2010

By R. Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Hercule Poirot are among the most famous of literary characters. They may have had their eccentricities, but being of an exotic or foreign racial extraction was not among them. It's different for another famous shamus, Charlie Chan; I know detective fiction fans might be able to think of some other non-white gumshoe, but he's the only one who comes to my mind. Chan did all the detective work those other sleuths did but in an honorable and modest way that was quite different, and all the while he mouthed amusing aphorisms that would have fit well inside a fortune cookie ("The wise elephant does not seek to ape the butterfly."). It says something that while none of those other detectives is at all controversial, Charlie Chan has at times been at the center of controversy, racial controversy. Chan's controversies, his origins, his portrayals in film, and his continuing appeal are the themes within _Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History_ (Norton) by Yunte Huang. Huang is from China, but is an American citizen and professor of English. In his graduate student days, he came upon Charlie Chan books at a garage sale and became a fan. He has turned his literary skills, as well as big dollops of history, onto the Chan case, and obviously enjoys letting us know about the often surprising facts he has uncovered. His book is a cheerful and insightful appreciation that will help anyone more deeply understand Chan's illustrious career.

Chan was the brainchild of Earl Derr Biggers, who grew up in Ohio and in 1925 wrote _The House Without a Key_, the book in which Charlie Chan first appeared. Chan only shows up halfway through the book and then as a minor character, but readers were intrigued by the bowing, courteous, quiet Chinese detective. They wanted more, and Biggers was to deliver a total of six novels before his death at age 48 in 1933. Huang explores the tenuous connection of the fictional Chan to the "real" Chan, who was actually named Chang Apana. Apana was the son of a Chinese plantation worker and a Hawaiian mother, who started work as a humane officer in Honolulu, and became a detective on the police force. He was not much like Charlie Chan. He was a wiry little man who was illiterate. He was smart, and fearless, and he could assume disguises that would allow him to gain an inside knowledge of such criminal endeavors as opium or gambling dens. He was, unlike Chan, a man of action and intimidation, using a bullwhip to help him subdue miscreants; he also wore a cowboy hat, both carryovers from his days as a Hawaiian cowboy. Biggers said that he had read a newspaper article about one of Apana's arrests, and this inspired his creation of Chan, but Huang could not find any such articles. At the very least, people who read the Chan stories associated Apana with Chan, and Biggers was happily disposed to promote the connection. Apana would also ally himself with Warner Oland, a Swedish actor whose specialty was oriental roles; besides playing the gentle good-guy Chan, he played the demonic super-villain Fu Manchu in the movies from the Sax Rohmer books. Charlie Chan has been through a spell of vilification. In the racially-sensitive nineteen-eighties, Chinese intellectuals cited his origin from a white author, and his being played by a white actor in yellowface, as signs that Chan was nothing more than an oriental Uncle Tom, whose embarrassing humility and sing-song proverbs would be best forgotten. But after all, Chan was funny, he was smarter than the non-Chinese around him, and he always solved the crime. The best words on the subject of whether Chan was demeaning to the Chinese came from Keye Luke, the Canton-born American actor who played Charlie's Number One Son. "They think it demeans the race... Demeans!" he exclaimed. "My God! You've got a Chinese hero!"

Huang has used the stories of Biggers, Oland, and Apana to examine such big topics as Hawaiian cultural history, the Asian-American experience, and racism toward the Chinese. At heart, though, he has a keen appreciation of the entertainment the books and movies offer (not to mention the radio shows, comics, cartoons, and board games). To learn what went on behind Bigger's creation of Chan, and Hollywood's manifestation of the great detective will help anyone enjoy the films more deeply. After all, as Chan himself said (there is a list of "Charlie Chanisms" in an appendix), "Front seldom tell truth. To know occupants of house, always look in back yard."

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The real scoop on Charlie Chan November 12, 2010

By Eileen P. Kopelman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book was really interesting. I saw the author on Booknotes on TV and ordered the book after hearing him talk about it. The book is about the real "Charlie Chan" on which the movies were based. At first I didn't think the book would be an easy read, but it kept drawing me in with well researched twists and turns. The author even has a very plausible theory about how the writer of the Charlie Chan stories, Earl Biggers, came up with the name Charlie Chan for his work. The book takes the reader through the early childhood of a Chinese boy who was born in Hawaii, how he became a famous detective, and finally, to the end of his life. Woven throughout is the tale of Earl Biggers who wrote the Charlie Chan stories and made a fortune doing it, as well as the stories of the actors who played Charlie in the movies. This book would be fabulous for a book club that would want to have a discussion and a real Charlie Chan movie afterwards.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars VERY ENJOYABLE AND ENLIGHTENING October 8, 2010

By Anne Salazar

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I really enjoyed this book on so many levels. It is much more than just the story of a beloved, bright and humorous character of our popular culture, Charlie Chan; it is also the story of a Harvard-educated author who made his best living by accidentally inventing this character in one of his books. This exemplifies all of the arthor interviews I have ever read wherein the author explains the creation of action and characters as having been led to them inadvertently, through the process of writing. Thus, the magic of the written word.

The author includes his own story, thereby illuminating the journey taken by so many immigrants over the course of American history. Above all, I think the message here clearly is: Lighten up, know your history and have some fun while learning it!

As is frequently the case with books published in the U.S., the book jacket seems weird. The picture of Apana is strange and off-putting, while the photo of the Charlie Chan character is interesting but relegated to a lower corner. It reminds me of the terrible design selected for California as part of the commerative series of Quarters: it is not necessary to include every aspect of a State, or a book, in a small spece, because it (the book cover as well as the 25-cent coin) then becomes cramped and messy. Less is better, almost always when working in small spaces. And yes, people DO, in fact, judge a book by its cover while browsing ...

I shouldn't be side-tracked here, though, because I loved the book and, as a character says, it does make me want to go back to Hawaii again, and soon. This book gives us a lot of Hawaiian history, publishing history, Chinese history, etc., and all of it with a smile on our faces "for very wonderful book".