And Judas Boogied Until His Slippers Wept
by Justin Chin
Published in Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms by Suspect Thoughts Press
Published January 1, 2005
Play (fiction, Asian American Studies, performance art)
Find on Amazon.com
Reviewed by Stephen O. Murray
September 1, 1993.
I don’t know what Justin Chin’s unmemorable title And Judas Boogied Until His Slippers Wept is supposed to mean, and I think that he’s a better writer than performer.
People think I have a lot of anger?! Chin articulates a lot of pains and angers at how queer Asians are despised by gay and Asian communities.
With his caricatures of various gay Asian types, he doesn’t exactly celebrate gay Asians himself. The part in which he impersonates the only Asian top in the world of gay male porn (with “dragon” in every title) is perhaps the funniest (along with the provision by an ecologically-conscious roommate of alternative modes of suicide for roaches).
Chin looked Thai to me (perhaps the shaved head of the Buddhist priests?). I can’t imagine anyone thinking him Japanese (something he claimed and, like most everything else, was offended by). Presuming the last part about a drag queen he used to see cruising the same park is autobiographical, Chin is from Singapore (born in 1969 in Malaysia of Chinese parents, schooled in Singapore, moved to San Francisco during the early 1990s and died there following a stroke in 2015; see here.
The script for this play is included in Chin’s Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms.
Find my 2002 review of Chin’s Burden of Ashes here.
©1993, 2016, Stephen O. Murray
1 September 1993
