Charlie Chan: Yunte Huang in Conversation with Charles Bernstein (photos courtesy of Lawrence Schwartzwald)

29 October 2010
Charlie Chan: Yunte Huang in Conversation with Charles Bernstein (photos courtesy of Lawrence Schwartzwald)

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.

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