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Yunte Huang

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History Hardcover – Deckle Edge, August 30, 2010

by Yunte Huang (Author)

146 ratings

3.7 on Goodreads

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Winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book and Shortlisted for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography: "An ingenious and absorbing book…It will permanently change the way we tell this troubled yet gripping story." ―Jonathan Spence

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

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

August 30, 2010
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
ISBN-10

0393069621
ISBN-13

978-0393069624
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Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, Roland Winters
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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

Review

Inthis original, deeply personal account, Huang illuminates every conceivable aspect ofChan and his place in American culture.... vibrant narrative.... Multilayered, provocative and highly accessible.

The most interesting story may be Huang 's own. He comes to see Chan as 'both the racist heritage and the creative genius' of his adopted nation 's culture.

A virtuoso of curiosity.... Huang digs up fascinating research on everything from the demographics of capital punishment in Honolulu to the origins of The Manchurian Candidate.... a work of exhaustively researched popular history that reads like a dime-store romance. --Pico Iyer"

Starred Review. This is a beautifully written analysis of racism and an appreciation of Charlie Chan and Chang Apana, made credible by Huang's background. "

Excellent and very sympathetic...You don't need to be a fan of Charlie's to enjoy Huang's narrative, maybe because he's told so many stories here, all of them intriguing...All this the lives of Biggers and Apana, Charlie s career in novels, movies, TV shows, cartoons, and comic books is told in the context of an America in the throes of nativism. Asian-Americans then were held in the same suspicion and contempt directed today at Arabs and Latinos, a fact that gives this story a lamentable but inescapable currency. --Sarah Ball"

It's a story so engaging on so many levels that, as with any good detective book, you won't want to put it down. --Elinor Lange"

In this original, deeply personal account, Huang illuminates every conceivable aspect of Chan and his place in American culture.... vibrant narrative.... Multilayered, provocative and highly accessible. "

[A] fascinating examination of Charlie Chan that is many books in one.... Huang's personal reflections are welcome interludes in this most compelling work. "

[A] fascinating cultural survey full of engaging tangents.... one of Huang's greatest accomplishments is his vivid narration of the history of Chinese immigration to the United States.... In the style of say, Louis Menand, Huang is that rare literary scholar with the light touch of a popular historian.... Huang's book is perfectly timed for the era of YouTube and Netflix and so hopefully will reintroduce what was created, with all its wisdom and imperfection. "

Huang presents an absorbing study of art taking on a life of its own. "

The most interesting story may be Huang s own. He comes to see Chan as 'both the racist heritage and the creative genius' of his adopted nation s culture. "

Writing easily without turgid academic cant, Huang, a former restaurateur, offers a tasty narrative menu. "

Charlie Chan remains, in himself, a sly and delightful figure, worthy of nostalgia and of Huang s very original, good-humored and passionately researched book. --Richard Schickel"

Charlie Chan, much like the classic geisha dolls on bookcase shelves, has survived for generations as little more than a paper-thin stereotype. Now in this impressive and highly-original work, Yunte Huang has brought this fictional character out of the dusty shadows into three-dimensional life, offering us not only a picture of a little-known swath of American history, but the surprising story of this Chinese detective's American creator, and the real-life figure who inspired him. --Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha"

Who would think that the back-story of the fictional character Charlie Chan could be so instructive, and so timely? Huang's deft and witty recounting of how Hollywood transformed a real life detective from Hawaii into one of the most recognizable and problematic racial icons in movie history tells us much that we need to know about America's engagement with race and identity in the 20th century. Race was clearly more than black and white, a thing to keep in mind as we move through our increasingly multi-cultural century. --Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello"

[G]ripping .... Huang writes with rare personal intensity and capacious intelligence. --Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare"

Witty and erudite, Charlie Chan intrigues and surprises as it unravels the three guises of this American original a real-life, Hawaiian-born Chinese detective, a literary creation, and a movie character. Racist stereotypes, we come to see in this exemplary work, can convey monstrous fictions as well as complex, multifaceted truths. --Gary Y. Okihiro, author of Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones"

Provocative and totally unique, Charlie Chan expands the yellowface debate with mischievous humor and a compelling sense of irony. In bringing the actual Honolulu detective, Chang Apana and his distorted Hollywood reflections to vivid life, Yunte Huang opens up important historical perspectives that have gone previously unexamined. --Jessica Hagedorn, editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Asian American Literature"

From the Back Cover

Praise for Charlie Chan

“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

“Huang’s deft and witty recounting of how Hollywood transformed a real-life detective from Hawaii into one of the most recognizable―and problematic―racial icons in movie history tells us much that we need to know about America’s engagement with race and identity in the twentieth century. Race was clearly more than black and white, a thing to keep in mind as we move through our increasingly multicultural century.” ―Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello

“Provocative and unique, Charlie Chan expands the yellowface debate with mischievous humor and a compelling sense of irony. In bringing the actual Honolulu detective, Chang Apana, and his distorted Hollywood reflections to vivid life, Yunte Huang opens up important historical perspectives that have gone previously unexamined.” ―Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters and editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead

“A significant work of American history written in a stimulating and masterful way. Most impressive is Yunte Huang’s ability to create a nuanced cultural and racial history out of the fictional Charlie Chan.” ―Peter Kwong, author of The New Chinatown

“Yunte Huang’s gripping Charlie Chan is an exploration of the celebrated Chinese detective of popular fiction and film. Himself a brilliant sleuth, Huang follows a trail of clues that leads to Honolulu and the deeply impressive career of Chang Apana, the Chinese-born detective on whom the character was based. From here the story fans out to encompass a great swath of the social and literary cultures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the tangled experience of Asian immigration to the United States, and the tormented history of American race relations. Huang writes with rare personal intensity and capacious intelligence.” ―Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World

About the Author

Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow, has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a professor of English. The author of Inseparable and the Edgar Award–winning biography Charlie Chan, both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture. He lives in Santa Barbara.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (August 30, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393069621
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393069624
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.48 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #605,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #139 in Mystery & Detective Literary Criticism
- #1,251 in Movie History & Criticism
- #4,959 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies

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YUNTE HUANG is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of "Inseparable," "Transpacific Imaginations," "CRIBS," and "Charlie Chan," which won an Edgar Award and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He is also the editor of "The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature." Born in China, Huang now lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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Top reviews from the United States

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Paul R. Waibel

Getting to Know the Man behind the Charlie Chan Stories and Movies

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 17, 2021

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Like many who grew up in the 1950's and 1960's, I enjoyed the adventures of the fictional detective known as Charlie Chan. I did not know, however, that there really was a policeman whose adventures in law enforcement in Honolulu at the beginning of the twentieth century served as inspiration for great fictional detective. His name was Chang Apana (1871-1933). He stood only five feet tall, but at times carried a bull whip with him as he patrolled Honolulu's Chinatown.

The story of how Chang Apana became the inspiration for author Earl Derr Biggers' fictional character, Charlie Chan, is the subject of Yunte Huang's CHARLIE CHAN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE HONORABLE DETECTIVE AND HIS RENDEZVOUS WITH AMERICAN HISTORY (New York: W. H. Norton & Company, 2010). Yunte Huang is a distinguished scholar and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of a number of books praised for their scholarship and readability.

Professor Huang used both archival materials and extensive reading in secondary sources to tell the story of both Chang Apana and Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan. He documents how Biggers’ creation one the most popular icons American popular culture through novels, and even more through movies. The book includes an extensive bibliography, which, together with the chapter notes and index, makes the book both enjoyable to read as well and a good source for one interested in a serious study of American popular culture during the first half of the twenty-first century.

Readers who have seen many of the Charlie Chan movies will no doubt enjoy “A List of Charlie Chanisms” in Appendix I. There are 56 of these gems including:
“Every maybe has a wife called Maybe-Not.”
“The fool questions others, the wise man questions himself.”
“Learn from hen—never boast about egg until after egg’s birthday.”
“Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.”
Appendix II contains a list of 47 Charlie Chan films produced between 1926 and 1949. Charlie Chan was played by 5 different actors over the years: George Kuwa (1926), Kamiyama Sojin (1927), E. L. Park (1929), Warner Oland (1931-1937), Sidney Toler (1938-1946) and Roland Winters (1947-2949).

In conclusion, I agree with Jonathan Spence’s (author of The Search for Modern China and Return to Dragon Mountain) assessment of Huang’s Charlie Chan: “An ingenious and absorbing book that provides a convincing new mode for examining the Chinese experience through Chinese and Western eyes. It will permanently change the way we tell this troubled gripping story.”

4 people found this helpful

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Leonard Zane

Both Culturally and Historically Valuable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 25, 2011

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The Charlie Chan movies widely charm people with an exotic and appealing protagonist and his tales. While caricatured, Charlie Chan is a quietly strong and intriguing Asian of great intelligence and sharp wit. He's gracious, calm and genteel, a diligent and patient detective with a mind that's often as mysterious as his cases. Most folks recognize the caricature, but Chan's nature captivates anyway. Like Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan has become more compelling and even more real-seeming than many naturalistic figures. So we don't resist Charlie Chan, and we go on to read Earl Derr Biggers' books about this remarkable Hawaiian-based sleuth, besides watching the movies.

In a number of ways, Yunte Huang's rendering of the Charlie Chan story is just as fascinating and appealing as the detective mysteries. In his somewhat rambling style, Huang winds through a history filled with enigmas that also seem bottomless to fathom adequately. It's a most provocative book.

Huang first draws comparisons between the fictional character and the annals of Chang Apana, of the Honolulu Police Department during the early 20th century. While recounting this, the author also interweaves portrayals of American social turbulence and stunning bigotries that continue to fester disturbingly -- although to some lesser degrees than what billowed a century ago. So we can notice definite social progress since those days.

Huang describes highlights in the life of Earl Derr Biggers, so we get a feel for what kind of person he was, even though he had sadly died before most of the Charlie Chan movies were ever filmed, with the film stories mostly originated by screenwriters.

Finally, Huang describes the various reactions to Charlie Chan among various ethnic and cultural groups. These reactions include such things as:

(1) "...most of Warner Oland's sixteen Chan movies were aired in China, 'to full houses and warm audience approval.'"

(2) "On March 22, 1936, Oland was mobbed by journalists and cameras in Shanghai as he stepped off the steamship Asian Empress...Chinese were ready to embrace him enthusiastically as one of their own."

(3) The Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) made condemnations: "Charlie Chan is a painful reminder of Hollywood's racist refusal to hire minorities to play roles that were designed for them...Instead, they were inaccurately depicted by Caucasian actors, who wore face paint to act out stereotypical images of Asians as slanted eye, buck toothed, subservient, and non-English speaking."

(4) Circa 2000, a Chinese-American writer wrote in The New York Times: "The aphorism-spouting Charlie Chan...is godlike in his intelligence, the original Asian whiz kid." And readers responded with such reactions as:

(a) "Chan belongs in film history with Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, not the land of coolies and Uncle Toms."

(b) The Chan movies had "a far more pernicious bias against blacks...and at least Charlie Chan was a highly respected, wise and capable detective, dominating each of the films."

So Yunte Huang presents an ample Dim sum of the Charlie Chan saga. This book is quite a ride through social unrest, prejudice and viciousness. It's an informative and powerful account of American/Hawaiian social ordeals, and at the same time an intriguing story of an artistic creation that has impacted American, Asian and other cultures around the globe. Do get the book and keep it.

7 people found this helpful

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Penny Farthing

Detecting at its best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

It wasn't what I expected as I thought it would be solely about the actor who was famous for playing Charlie Chan. I was more than halfway through before the author got round to that.
However, it gave the full history of the Charlie Chan character - the author who wrote the stories; the detective on whom the character was based; the filming of the books plus the different actors who played him, several of whom only did the one film.
All in all a very good book, packed with information and a book I shall be returning to many times, I should think.

N. Griffiths

Prompt seller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 10, 2018

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A fascinating read and shows a new perspective on the character which has been overlooked.
The seller dispatched the item promptly and the product was in better condition than I expected for a former library book.

Mark

A great read in so many ways

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a great story, masterfully told, about the pop culture phenom that was Charlie Chan. But more importantly, it gives indelible insight into Hollywood's not always "honorable" portrayl of the Asian man. A fascinating tale on many levels.

Dr. DNA

fluent but...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 8, 2017

Verified Purchase

If only the author had kept himself out of it, I might've finished reading his eloquent study of Biggers and his cultural misfit, Inspector Charlie Chan.

Ernest Rovet

Who knew

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

I learned of this book while reading Leportes essays on American history. I had no idea this fascinating scholarship existed. Thank you Jill and Amazon.

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