Diana Chang

Diana Chang
Chang beside a Marc Chagall lithograph, c. 1951 Chang beside a Marc Chagall lithograph, c. 1951
Born	1924 (1924)
Died	February 19, 2009(2009-02-19) (aged 84–85)
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Chinese, Japanese, American
Alma mater	Barnard College, Columbia University
Genre	Novel, poetry
Notable works	The Frontiers of Love

Diana Chang (Chinese: 張粲芳; 1924 – February 19, 2009) was a Chinese American novelist and poet. She is best known for her novel The Frontiers of Love, one of the earliest novels by an Asian American woman. She is considered to be the first American-born Chinese to publish a novel in the United States.

Early life

Chang was born in New York City to a Chinese father, Kuang Chi Chang, and Eurasian mother, Eva Mary Lee Wah Chang, and spent her youngest years in China, including Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai. She attended high school in New York, and graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 1949 where she majored in English, focusing on British and American poets. While an undergraduate at Barnard, Chang had 3 of her poems published by Poetry Magazine, including "At The Window."

Career

After graduation, Chang worked as a book editor at three publishing houses: Avon Books, Bobbs-Merrill, A. A. Wyn). She also worked as the editor for the PEN-sponsored journal American Pen and as a creative writing teacher at Barnard College.

Literary work

Chang's best known work is The Frontiers of Love. Her work has more recently been read in terms of postmodernity and hybridity. Although critical work on Chang has increased since the republication of Frontiers, critics have preferred to examine her Asian-themed works; her "white" novels are only recently getting attention. While at Barnard College, Chang published her poem, Mood in Modern Poetry Association's Poetry.

Personal life

Chang lived in Water Mill, NY with her husband David Hermann.

She died on February 19, 2009.

Published works

Novels

• The Frontiers of Love, (1956, reissued 1974)
• A Woman of Thirty (1959)
• A Passion for Life (1961)
• The Only Game in Town (1963)
• Eye to Eye (1974)
• A Perfect Love (1978)

Poetry

• Saying Yes (Unknown)
• The Horizon is Definitely Speaking (1982)
• What Matisse is After (1984)
• Earth Water Light (1991)

Awards

• Fulbright
• John Hay Whitney Opportunity Fellowship
• Mademoiselle Magazine Woman-of-the-Year

See also

• List of Asian American writers

Further reading

• Baringer, Sandra. "'The Hybrids and the Cosmopolitans': Race, Gender, and Masochism in Diana Chang's The Frontiers of Love" pp. 107–21 IN: Brennan, Jonathan (ed. and introd.); Mixed Race Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP; 2002.
• Fink, Thomas; "Chang's 'Plunging into View'" Explicator, 1997 Spring; 55 (3): 175–77.
• Grice, Helena. "Diana Chang" pp. 30–35 IN: Madsen, Deborah L. (ed. and introd.); Asian American Writers. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005.
• Grice, Helena. "Face-ing/De-Face-ing Racism: Physiognomy as Ethnic Marker in Early Eurasian/Amerasian Women's Texts" pp. 255–70 IN: Lee, Josephine (ed.); Lim, Imogene L. (ed.); Matsukawa, Yuko (ed.); Re/Collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP; 2002.
• Ling, Amy; "Writer in the Hyphenated Condition: Diana Chang" MELUS, 1980 Winter; 7 (4): 69–83.
• Spaulding, Carol Vivian; Blue-Eyed Asians: Eurasianism in the Work of Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far, Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna, and Diana Chang. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1997 Jan; 57 (7): 3024–25. U of Iowa, 1996.
• Wu, Wei-hsiung Kitty; Cultural Ideology and Aesthetic Choices: A Study of Three Works by Chinese-American Women—Diana Chang, Bette Bao Lord, and Maxine H. Kingston.' Dissertation Abstracts International, 1990 June; 50 (12): 3956A.