Chinkstar What does it mean to reclaim something? How does one break away from stereotypes when doing such reclamation? Can we imagine a world with an Asian rap star, when we don\u2019t have one yet in reality?<\/p>\n These are the questions that kept circling my mind as I read through Jon Chan Simpson\u2019s debut novel, Chinkstar<\/i>. My first reaction to the title, along with its bright yellow cover featuring a red microphone, was to feel a little bit cautious, and also a bit provoked: are we ready for this? Shouldn\u2019t Asian Canadians have a bit more cultural capital before we throw this word out to the mainstream?<\/p>\n Perhaps that cultural capital is happening right now; with the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat” entering major cable television for the first time since the early 90s, Whether the show is a step forward or not is still up for debate, but it has undoubtedly put Asian Americans back in the cultural conversation. As an Asian Canadian reader who was\/is hungry for narratives and characters that mirror my own, I felt both excited and slightly nervous before hitting the pages of Chinkstar<\/i>.<\/p>\n If the title doesn\u2019t grab your interest, the unlikely and unique premise should: a new style of rap called Chinksta rap has taken the small town of Red Deer, Alberta, by storm. When Chinksta rap\u2019s originator and star, King Kwong, goes missing and his mother gets hit with a stray bullet, Kwong\u2019s teenage brother Run must rise to the occasion and solve the mystery \u2014 and save his family. At the heart of the mystery is the mobilizing potential of Chinksta rap for the Chinese community \u2014 and the threat it poses to the rival gang, the \u201cNecks.\u201d<\/p>\n Told from Run\u2019s perspective in first person, Chinkstar<\/i> is also a coming-of-age story of the underdog brother who has felt eclipsed by his brother\u2019s larger-than-life presence, but must rise to the occasion to rescue that same brother. Of course, no coming-of-age story is complete without a love interest; for Run, that person happens to be a sister of a rival \u201cNeck.\u201d<\/p>\n Simpson\u2019s language resembles that of Junot Diaz, with mash-ups of references and aggressive undertones. Mosquitoes get \u201csecondhand-f*cked on the whisky\u201d that the teenagers have consumed, which cause them to \u201ckamikaze looping and crashing.\u201d Chinese references and culture make their way into Simpson\u2019s prose without English explanations; Run muses about his parents\u2019 reaction to his brother\u2019s fame: \u201cwhat did my parents think of their little siu mai turned rapper, all grown-up and taking over the world?\u201d (Siu mai is a type of dumpling served during dim sum).<\/p>\n At first, Red Deer seems like an unlikely place where Run\u2019s\u2014and Kwong\u2019s\u2014hybridity can flourish into a Chinksta revolution. The monotony of small-town life is palpable, as Run describes the stretch of box stores, obesity, and \u201cvolunteerism out of control.\u201d However, Simpson challenges the stereotype of a homogenous small town by giving us the unique \u201chalfchi\u201d (Chinese\/Scottish) identities of Run and Kwong. The Red Deer of Chinkstar<\/i> contains Chinese legends, 90s hip-hop, and the varying spectrum of Asian food that go from run-of-the-mill chicken balls of a Chinese restaurant to pho. In fact, the symbolism of a Vietnamese restaurant is used ingeniously to describe diversification of a town by one of the characters:<\/p>\n You got to be good with chopsticks to eat pho [\u2026] [N]oodles in boiling liquid take dexterity. So. The number of pho joints in a city and how much paper they pull are good indicators of ‘stick literacy.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Confident in its tone and unapologetic in its uniqueness, Chinkstar is an unforgettable experience, and one that makes me hopeful to see more unique Asian Canadian voices in the literary scene soon. To end in the words of King Kwong: \u201cBlack is the night, but yellow is the day.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fiction Review Chinkstar by Jon Chan Simpson Toronto, ON: Coach House, 2015 202pp, $19.95 paperback What does it mean to reclaim something? How does one break away from stereotypes when doing such reclamation? Can we imagine a world with an Asian rap star, when we don\u2019t have one yet in reality? These are the questions that kept circling my mind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/i>by Jon Chan Simpson
\n<\/span>Toronto, ON: Coach House, 2015
\n<\/span>202pp, $19.95 paperback<\/span><\/p>\n