Charlie Chan: Yunte Huang in conversation with Charles Bernstein October 28, 2010

Charlie Chan, a fictional Chinese detective played by white men on the silver screen, captivated American audiences for decades with one-liners like "tongue often hang man quicker than rope" and is today seen as a yellowface relic. In Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Yunte Huang attempts to recast the maligned icon. Frank Chin, a founding father of Asian American literature, has called Charlie Chan movies "parables of racial order." But is Charlie Chan racist or remarkable? Come decide for yourself as Huang maps Charlie Chan's evolution from real-life Cantonese-Hawaiian legend to cinematic icon to despised postmodern symbol, and, in the process, reshapes the way we will view the controversial figure again. The New York Times calls Huang's retelling of Charlie Chan a "very original, good-humored and passionately researched book." Join him in conversation with LANGUAGE poet and scholar Charles Bernstein as they discuss the ways we can complicate notions of identity and performance and decide the place for yellowface.