Examining hundreds of biographical, literary, and cinematic sources, in English and in his native Chinese, Yunte Huang has pursued the trail of Charlie Chan since the mid-1990s, searching for clues in places as improbable as Harvard Yard, an Ohio cornfield, a weathered Hawaiian cemetery, and the Shanghai Bund. His efforts to refashion the Charlie Chan legend became a personal mission, as if the answers he sought would reshape his own identity—no longer a top Chinese student but an immigrant American eager to absorb the bewildering history of his adopted homeland.
Yunte Huang has been on the trail of Charlie Chan since the mid-1990s, a few years after he arrived in the U.S. in 1991. A Professor of English at the University of California, he has also taught at Harvard. The author of Transpacific Imaginations and a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, Huang, born in China, now lives in Santa Barbara, California.
The photos here (copyright: Lawrence Schwartzwald) are from last night's event, Charlie Chan: Yunte Huang in conversation with Charles Bernstein, organized by The Asian American Writers' Workshop.
