Gunga Din Highway by Frank Chin
"Gunga Din Highway" is a novel by Frank Chin that explores the complexities of Chinese American identity through the lens of its protagonist, Longman Kwan, a Chinese American actor typecast in Hollywood roles that often reinforce racial stereotypes. The narrative unfolds as Longman reunites with an actor who once played Charlie Chan, a character historically portrayed by white actors rather than Asian Americans. The story also introduces Longman's rebellious son, Ulysses Kwan, whose life mirrors elements of Chin’s own experiences. Ulysses grapples with cultural identity, rejecting both his Chinese heritage and the expectations imposed by white society, while forming deep bonds with friends from diverse backgrounds.
As Ulysses navigates the bohemian culture of late 1950s and 60s America, he encounters a range of characters that reflect the struggles and achievements of Chinese Americans, including a friend whose father’s tragic story resonates with themes of loss and identity. The novel culminates in a poignant scene at Longman's funeral, where Ulysses delivers a eulogy that critiques the notion of self-sacrifice for white acceptance, drawing on Rudyard Kipling's poem "Gunga Din" to underscore his rejection of this narrative. Ultimately, "Gunga Din Highway" challenges readers to consider the paths chosen by Asian Americans in their quest for identity and recognition in a society that often marginalizes them.
On this Page
Gunga Din Highway by Frank Chin
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1994
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Gunga Din Highway is a passionately argued novel about Chinese American identity. It opens with Longman Kwan, a Chinese American actor who is given bit parts in Hollywood movies that stereotype Asians, generally dying for whites or as their enemy. Now, Longman reunites with the (fictional) last white actor who played the Chinese detective Charlie Chan opposite Longman’s role as Chan’s fourth son.
As throughout his oeuvre, Chin deftly mixes the real with the imaginary. Charlie Chan was indeed played by three different whites and never an Asian actor. His subordinate sons were played by Chinese Americans such as Keye Luke, whose real filmography looks much like Longman Kwan’s imaginary one.
Soon the novel turns to Longman’s third, rebellious son. Named Ulysses Kwan after James Joyce’s modernist novel once banned in America for its erotic content, Ulysses’s life is inspired by Chin’s own. As a boy, Ulysses rebels against Chinese and whites alike and associates with African Americans. He torments his Chinese language teachers and forms a lifelong brotherhood with two friends, Diego Chang and Benjamin Han. Playing on Chin’s concern with father-son relationships, Benjamin changes his last name to Mo, that of his father who was killed by his mother’s lover, who then became his despised stepfather.
As a young man, Ulysses lives a bohemian lifestyle vindicated by the cultural upheaval of late 1950’s and 1960’s America when California became a haven of counterculture. Working as brakeman for a railroad company, Ulysses eventually moves up to Seattle. There, he and his father meet again at a Woodstock-like rock festival. Yet his father does not recognize the pony-tailed rock musician as his son, and on stage, the old man satirizes his own role as Charlie Chan’s fourth son.
Benjamin bears traits of the author as well. Like Chin, Benjamin studies creative writing in Santa Barbara and becomes famous with a radical play. Benjamin’s wife, writer Pandora Toy, is a thinly disguised caricature of Chin’s female Asian adversaries. On the opening night of Benjamin’s play, Pandora attempts suicide out of professional jealousy, and her Conquering Woman is an obvious allusion to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976). Pandora fakes Chinese mythology just as Chin accused Kingston and Tan of doing.
The novel reaches a climax with Longman Kwan’s funeral, organized by his first Chinese-born son who has become a millionaire in America. When the arrival of a white actor to play Charlie Chan in the remake adds to the insult of a Catholic funeral for Buddhist Kwan, Ulysses takes charge and delivers the eulogy. Now the meaning of the novel’s title is revealed, as Ulysses quotes from the end of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Gunga Din” (1892). Ostensibly, the poem praises an Indian water carrier who sacrifices himself for a British soldier. In Ulysses’s interpretation, the poem reveals what is wrong about Asian Americans sacrificing themselves for whites. He and his friends will not travel along his father’s Gunga Din highway but will choose another road.
Bibliography
Abe, Frank. “Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947.” Amerasian Journal 30, no. 2 (Summer, 2004): 107-113.
Cheung, King-Kok. “The Woman Warrior Versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose Between Feminism and Heroism?” In The Woman Warrior: A Casebook, edited by Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Lee, Rachel. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Leonard, Suzanne. “Dreaming as Cultural Work in Donald Duk and Dreaming in Cuban.” MELUS 29, no. 2 (Summer, 2004): 181-205.
Li, David Leiwi. “The Formation of Frank Chin and the Formations of Chinese American Literature.” In Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives, edited by Shirley Hune, Hyung-chan Kim, Stephen Fugita, and Amy Lin. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1991.
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “The Remasculinization of Chinese America: Race, Violence, and the Novel.” American Literary History 12, nos.1/2 (Spring/Summer, 2000): 130-157.
Richardson, Susan B. “The Lessons of Donald Duk.” MELUS 24, no.4 (Winter 1999): 57-78.
Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and the Chinese American Autobiography Controversy.” In The Woman Warrior: A Casebook, edited by Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.