Yellow Face-Off: Frank Chin vs. David Henry Hwang
June 21, 2007
Dear Yellowkid:
They say it hit 90 in the valley today. There’s a warm evening breeze, fine smells are drifting over from the corner carnitas stand, and I’m gulping down a Mickeys Big Mouth from a brown paper sack in the parking lot of The House of Spirits on Echo Park Avenue when up walks a wild-eyed homeless guy in a tattered blue T-shirt with “Juventus” printed in a nice font across the front. At first, I think he’s gonna hit me up for change or sell me a baggy full of fertilizer posing at Oaxacan. But no, and here’s where it starts to get weird, he tries to scam me with a bootleg Microsoft Word “doc” file.
“The dude’s, you know, some kind of a writer or something, you know? And he lives up on Altivo or one of those streets up in the hills. You know, and I been watching him, yeah? There’s a lot good stuff in his trash and in the glove compartment of his car. You know I read a lot at the library, you know, and this guy knows a lot of famous writers, and they’re all mentioned in this little beauty right here”—he produces a tiny 2 gig USB thumbdrive.
“I haven’t had time to parse all of the concepts in it, man, but it’s obvious this guy, F.C., can’t stand this D.H.H. guy. Seems like, you know, some kind of big-time literary dispute going on, you know, with artistic integrity at the heart of the matter.”
I handed him one of my Mickeys and waved him away. True story.
It wasn’t until I got home later that I noticed something shiny on the floor of the car—the thumbdrive. Here’s what I found on it:
