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a collection by
Justin Chin
Praise for Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms
"A decade of performance art prose settles restlessly, hilariously, potently, and poignantly onto the pages of this collection of poet and memoirist Chin's live appearances; good stuff, and, best of all, he's not afraid to critique his own work, in a series of insightful introductions to each piece."
—Richard Labonté,
Books to Watch Out For
"After four books, two volumes of poetry and two collections of essays, Justin Chin delivers more of the same in Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms: incendiary art. This new collection chronologically compiles a decades worth of performance art. The primary question is: can the text of performance communicate as readily on the page as on the stage? Of course it can. Those familiar with Chin's writings know he's visceral and probing; some readers might worry that a performance without the necessary physical presence (or in Chin's case, visual assault) might necessarily be diluted or sterile. Nope. The prose and poetry here possess a stream-of-conscious quality that makes the political digestible while the personal is revealing, cathartic, and occasionally both funny and frightening.
"I'm not sure if prospective readers will embrace or cringe over a book of performance art--I've always thought of Chin as a performance artist who wrote, and was surprised to discover here that he's a writer who performs. The distinction is telling. As a writer delving into a different medium, whatever might succeed or fail on a stage, Chin's already past proving he's capable of bringing ideas to a reading audience. Now lets face it, performance art has a bad reputation, so it's worth noting the author's lament over the "media representation of the stereotypical performance artist, either wailing like a banshee and throwing food at the audience or being pretentious and meaning-challenged, scoffing at idiots who did not get The Meaning when there was none." And this isn't Chin being touchy--rather he's simply disarming any preconceived notions readers might bring to the book.
"The introduction begins as a humorous family discussion, some 25 years in the future, about his performance art and the '90s in general. Just as I was getting ready to enjoy some cynically faux-hindsight fun, he much too abruptly switches gears, awkwardly jumping into a quick, useful dissertation on the nature of the work to follow. This would have been a great opportunity to channel his wit into an Orwellian vein, but I'm guessing the author was simply in a rush to get on with it and let the performances speak for themselves.
"The pieces host a variety of themes: personal and political, the gay community and AIDS, race and nationality, sexuality and being. The hypnotic rhythm of most performances carries the reader along; some portions come across as telling, sing-songy surreal bedtime stories for a community all too ready to nod off when certain issues challenge its all-inclusive self-image. The poems here serve both as his Songs of Innocence (heard through a Walkman) and his Songs of Experience (learned in clubs, clinics and public toilets). On stage, some performances are punctuated by slides; for example, in one live performance, slides coolly dissect the performer-as-go-go boy, a voice-over serving as his subconscious, offering bored, meandering thoughts about shopping for dinner.
"Unfortunately, the images are not reproduced in the book [publisher note: there are quite a few performance fliers and images included in the book.], but described; where this must certainly have enhanced live performances, on the printed page it's an unwarranted roadblock, especially when things heat up in Chin's kitchen. And food plays a big role in his performances--it's one of the primary ingredients he uses while boiling away stereotypes. He also uses his own blood. He allows blood to run down his arm as he removes the syringe. He mixes it with rice and eats it. He adds his blood to milk and drinks it. With this focus on the body, some readers will likely invoke Theory to get a handle on Chin's work. Not me. Reading this book resurrected memories of The Dead Kennedy's, Crass and the like, seminal punk bands who made music that was (is) the opposite of pretty because often times that is where the truth lies: just beyond the acceptable. Plus, synchronicity being what it is, I was listening to P.I.L.'s This Is Not A Love Song while reading his invective "This Is Not The Joy Luck Club," though just as I got comfortable with the comparison, he started in on ABBA, reminiscing about '80s pop and coming-out issues painful and hilarious, in a performance that could easily stand with the best parts of his essay collection/memoir, Burden of Ashes.
"And naturally some pieces work better than others. The book closes with an unfinished work that would have been really intriguing if revisited and fully developed. Certainly there's enough challenging content that some things are as likely to offend as provoke. But if you think Justin Chin's dropped the ball here or there, I can only offer a gentle reminder that he is, after all, juggling hand grenades."
—Tom Cardamone,
Books to Watch Out For
"Popular and controversial San Francisco performance artist Justin Chin's best set-pieces, presented nationally and abroad from 1993-2001, have been translated into text format and assembled into book form in this extraordinarily creative collection. Included are original advertisements for each performance, many hosted at Josie's Juice Joint and Cabaret, a venue longtime San Francisco residents will remember with nostalgic longing.
"All of the performances contained within the book are engrossing. Many brilliantly wrestle with notions of race and class, or of prayers to God, some offering startlingly profound musings. "There are too many people that believe in love," Chin muses in a vignette that shares the book's name. "But what they perceive to be love is merely a mistranslation."
"The bulk of the book is comprised of transcripts of Chin's varied but always titillating performances, some thought-provoking and contemplative in the way that the best web-blogs can be, and some laugh-out-loud funny. This is most evident in Chin's breakdown of Castro Street popular culture into a game called Fagtown Bingo. Though this idea and many other spoken-word performances were conceived and executed in the mid-to-late 1990s, some things never change. Chin targets the ever-enduring proliferation of Castro types like the "Diva Without a Cause," "Butch with Nelly Dog," "Speed Queen," "Super Angry Fag," "Holier-Than-Thou Bike Fag," and the elusive "Leather Titleholder Wearing Sash while Grocery Shopping."
"The ability to laugh at oneself is key to understanding Chin and his performance purpose, since the actor himself laughs at his own shortcomings while poking fun at everyone else. Translating this kind of humor to an audience, especially in the dark days of the early 90s, when many had lost their ability to laugh at all, was indeed tricky, but was and is precisely what makes Justin Chin unique and a star in his own right.
"Chin's performances are not only confined to the spoken word, his shows were visually stimulating as well. Backdrops ranged from the favored minimum of a bare light-bulb to stimulating photographs of puckered assholes, the use of a bullhorn, and on to the bizarre and symbolic, as in "Missionary Positions," where he slathered himself with Vaseline and covered his slick flesh in rice. Chin's "Mea Culpa" performance required an audience member to whip him onstage stripped down to a T-shirt and underwear, while he apologized for a lexicon of faults like "not believing when I should have," "when I laughed when I said that I wouldn't," when "I contributed to a friend's assisted suicide," and for "not being discreet." Cooking hotdogs in a microwave on stage, Chin uproariously described genitalia from an assortment of popular countries: the "pungent" French cock, the "garlicky" Italian dick, the American penis ("you can charge it to your VISA/AMEX.")
"This is an ultra-fine collection of provocative set-pieces that, once digested, will surely elicit feelings of missed opportunities in many readers. The performances are long gone, as are the time and place in which they once thrived. On the stage, and now in book form, Chin's body of work merits shelf-space alongside the best of San Francisco's fringe performance-art histories."
—Jim Piechota,
Bay Area Reporter
Full review available here.
"Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms is a collection of scripts and descriptions of performance art. Oh dear, I thought, I know nothing about performance art. And then I read the book.
"I still don't know a great deal about performance art, but I know a lot more than I did. This is a wonderful book. The introductions to each piece are witty, informative and give a warm, slightly nostalgic, edge to the text. The scripts themselves are extremely good. The pieces are creative, funny, honest, and vicious in parts.
"I feel happy now that I know something about being a gay Asian-American living in San Francisco during the 1990s, and the emotions brought about by AIDS, sex-tourism and the general feeling towards gay Asian-Americans. I can't ever do a Cher and turn back time, and so I shall never sit in the audience of one of Justin Chin's shows, leaving this the nearest thing to the experience.
This book deserves to be on everybody's bookshelf."
—Leon Fleming,
Chroma
"Justin Chin is a performance artist/poet whom haters of poetry and performance art might appreciate. His work has the kind of simplicity that makes it seem familiar at first glance--but take a detour between the lines, and hidden metaphors pop up like long-forgotten childhood memories. Chin is prolific, too: The young author of two poetry collections and two essay collections, he's also been anthologized and aggrandized by just about every small press around. His new book, Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms, is a compilation of performance texts written between 1993 and 2001 that covers his common themes with the usual dose of cool detachment and unruffled satire. He writes about commodification, sexuality, and otherness without the overwrought conceits of most performance poetry, but make no mistake--this is verse that's meant to be spit aloud. In Chin's poems, Coca-Cola logos cast long shadows against the narrative backdrop, cartoon characters brush shoulders with gods, and village women walk around toting Gucci knockoff handbags. His work is as conversational as it is cryptic--a combination that separates Chin from his peers."
—Nirmala Nataraj,
SF Weekly
"The first time I saw Justin perform he blew me away. He was graphic, nasty, insolent, and oh so compelling. I couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t stop listening."
—Philip Kan Gotanda,
playwright and author of No More Cherry Blossoms
"Justin Chin joyously picks at the scab of these times to peek at what our flesh really looks like underneath...no subject is off-limits as Chin humorously explores the hot buttons of sex, class, race and even proctology!"
—Tim Miller,
performance artist and author of Body Blows
"Justin Chin is a terrifying original. His wit is fierce and biting. He scrutinizes the world in which we live with unrelenting harshness and at the same with an astounding beauty. A potent and singular voice, Justin Chin has an assured place in American and Asian literature, poetry and performance."
—Chay Yew,
playwright and director
release: August 2005
gay fiction/queer studies/drama
softcover, 5X8
224 pages, $16.95
0-9746388-8-9
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