In the early 1970s, Frank Chin, the outspoken Chinese American author of
such plays as The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon, wrote
a full-length novel that was never published and presumably lost. Nearly
four decades later, Calvin McMillin, a literary scholar specializing in
Asian American literature, would discover Chin's original manuscripts
and embark on an extensive restoration project. Meticulously reassembled
from multiple extant drafts, Frank Chin's "forgotten" novel is a sequel
to The Chickencoop Chinaman and follows the further misadventures of Tam
Lum, the original play's witty protagonist.
Haunted by the bitter memories of a failed marriage and the untimely
death of a beloved family member, Tam flees San Francisco's Chinatown
for a life of self-imposed exile on the Hawaiian island of Maui. After
burning his sole copy of a manuscript he believed would someday be
hailed as "The Great Chinese American Novel," Tam stumbles into an
unlikely romance with Lily, a former nun fresh out of the convent and
looking for love. In the process, he also develops an unusual friendship
with Lily's father, a washed-up Hollywood actor once famous for
portraying Charlie Chan on the big screen. Thanks in no small part to
this bizarre father/daughter pair, not to mention an array of equally
quirky locals, Tam soon discovers that his otherwise laidback island
existence has been transformed into a farce of epic proportions.
Had it been published in the 1970s as originally intended, The
Confessions of a Number One Son might have changed the face of Asian
American literature as we know it. Written at the height of Frank Chin's
creative powers, this formerly "lost" novel ranks as the author's
funniest, most powerful, and most poignant work to date. Now, some forty
years after its initial conception, The Confessions of a Number One Son
is finally available to readers everywhere.
