Bio - Pic of AA Poet Frances Chung

For the poetry unit of the class, I choose the Chinese American poet Frances Chung (1950 to 1990). She was born and raised at the border of New York’s Chinatown and Little Italy. Her mother and father are Chee Kin and Wilbur Chung, and she has an older sister Edna. At Smith College, she got a degree in mathematics and after graduating she taught at public schools in the Lower East Side of New York.

There is not much about her online, but I gather that most of her poetry is for her to let out her thoughts and experiences. The book I found is Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple – The Poems of Frances Chung. The titles “Crazy Melon” and “Chinese Apple” are from two unpublished book manuscripts that were found in Chung’s papers. These poems show and describe her living in New York’s Chinatown in the 1960’s and 70’s. “Crazy Melon deftly sketches the streets, fantasies, commerce and toil of Chung’s neighborhoods, while the later Chinese Apple offers new themes and cityscapes – delightfully understated eroticism, tributes to poets, impressions of other Chinese diasporic communities around the world.” From the Commentary by Walter K Lew, Frances also really liked the bookmaking process and was passionate about authenticating her work to get it out in the world for people to read. She would even make her own paperback books with folded sheets of paper and the “Crazy Melon” manuscript was kept in a clear box where she taped a plum candy wrapper to the lid and stamped her red Chinese seal.

I found Frances Chung just by chance landing in the Asian American aisle at the SFSU Bookstore. Katrina and I were on break in-between classes and we were originally looking for a food book that I heard about, but we were a little lost and just so happened to be standing in front of the AA section. Then a light bulb went off that we should look for our poets and see if we could find any poetry books here. We ended up finding this book full of Asian American poets, called Yobo - Korean American Writing in Hawai‘i. When I got home I looked up some of the poets that wrote poems that I liked online and found Walter K Lew. Then I saw that his book was at the SFPL so I went to check it out, but it was missing and then I found Frances Chung’s book. I thought the title was cool so I flipped through it and read some of her poems and there you go – my poet.