Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, Pranks
By Justin Chin
Publication Year: 1998
Type: Non-fiction
Genre: essays, memoir, LGBTQ, social justice
Read on 2019-10-22
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★★
A phenomenally thought-provoking collection of essays, musings, and one or two more formalized reporting pieces on queerness and diasporic Asian identity. Really wrings out the personal-as-political to its fullest. Not a single sentence is wasted, just trim and true ideas through and through. It’s perfectly grim, funny, wry, raw, brutal, tragic, irreverent, bawdy. Queer as heck. I found myself taking down so many quotes on things I’ve thought or wondered, expressed in better clearer words by this stranger from the decade I was born, the things about myself and my experience of the world I am still coming to know.
I took some sparse notes summarizing the first few essays and then just went on reading. On the whole I much preferred the shorter more creative and personal pieces over the journalistic pieces originally published elsewhere. Here are my notes on the first few essays/chapters:
Chain letter - delightfully nostalgically y2k intro that simulates a chain letter to tell reader to pass on this book lest terrible things happen!!!
Monster - spare and bare, quick and (just a little bit) dirty personal history of growing up/self discovery of gay in Singapore before moving to US west coast at 18
Saved - documentary style exposé of Exodus International and other chapters/programs of Christian homosexual conversion/“support” groups, minimal personal inserts (later found out this was one of the journalistic pieces he wrote for a news publication.
Q-punk grammar - written around the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, asks questions like Is the history of Stonewall a personal history? Does it matter? What is a queer history? Disagreements to The Narrative, to its significance. (Especially poignant reading this on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall in New York where rainbow capitalism has absolutely taken over the town. I’ve had an oddly distantly routine relationship to Stonewall walking past it everyday coming up the subway going to work. Had many conversations with queer friends about queer history and how universal it is/should be for queer individuals, and about rainbow capitalism/LGBTQ+ rights entering the mainstream.)
On Ass Tactics, Aztec Ticks, Aesthetics - I didn’t take notes on this because I full-ass photographed this entire (short) chapter because the entire thing is quotable and relevant and funny as fuck. It’s about cultural aesthetics or “cow-churrail Aztec ticks” and how it’s...not a thing.
To conclude, I can’t believe this isn’t more widely known and read (I had to request from the NYU library where it was being housed off-site???) I recommend to every queer/Asian friend and especially recommend to my queer and Asian friends. Also people interested in issues of art and culture. Honestly just fucking read you some Justin Chin just do it okay. Do it for me. Thank you good bye.
See me review this book in this video!
