Writers from China's diaspora
As you might expect of a man best known for the screwball novel Donald Duk, Frank Chin has an unusual background. 'I brought myself up,' says Chin, 64, from his San Francisco home. 'It was pretty good,' he says, unfazed that his parents, who hailed from Guandong province, had little time for him.
They were so distant that the future writer had no idea what parents were. When his father did materialise, he wasn't much of a mentor. Chin, who has three children by two marriages, describes his father as a playboy. His only skill lay in the bedroom, he jokes.
The self-styled humorist is a straight-talker who speaks in a dry growl punctuated by eruptions of laughter. His skill at writing was obvious from an early age. In junior high school, he was pegged as an author and sent to college writing courses.
He loved Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. However, he didn't think much of the Beat writers because Kerouac and Ginsberg 'had a reputation - had a taste for little Chinese boys'.
Chin preferred the company of the robber-turned-poet Gregory Corso and his girlfriend. They would come round for coffee, the relationship casual 'because Corso was always drunk and always focused on himself. His girlfriend was a very lovely girl and she cared for him very much and I think he was lucky. He reminded me of my father.'