Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays

Thought-provoking, furious, hilarious, tough, outrageous, erudite, and compassionate all at once, Frank Chin is perhaps the most instantly recognizable voice in Chinese American writing today. A self-proclaimed ‘transcendent Chinaman pagan heathen barbarian’, Chin searches out (or stumbles on) the right people and situations, vividly recording the outcome in distinctly American terms. Here are six of the best essays, spanning the past forty years. Making his way across America to Cuba, Chin is arrested as an American spy some time between Castro’s revolution and the missile crisis. He meets Ben Fee, the man who integrated San Francisco, and is introduced to Southeast Asian gangs and culture in San Diego. He discovers Chinese bachelor society along the California-Mexico border and travels to Singapore, where he speculates on the fear and suppression of Chinese culture among Chinese Singaporeans. Back at the homefront, he encounters the new white racism along Interstate 5 during the Gulf War. Frank Chin is the author of two widely acclaimed novels, Donald Duk and Gunga Din Highway, and a collection of stories, The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co., for which he won the American Book Award.