Excerpted: Jon Chan Simpson’s Chinkstar

As Canadians celebrate Asian Heritage Month across the country, we’re turning our eye towards Chinkstar, the first novel by Jon Chan Simpson. With a flair for the rap lyric, Simpson has created a graphicless, graphic novel that not only offers a bold new vision of what a novel can be but also provides the reader with a brilliant example of the second-generation-immigrant-narrative.Poised to be published next month by Coach House Books, read on for an excerpt from Chinkstar.* * *

The FedsMy parents kept their names when they married, and when it came time to naming the kids, they figured a coin toss was fairest. Both our quarters came up Kwong—me and him should have been linked. But instead, thinking about how two people, a Scotsman and Chinawoman, could make such different babies kept me up nights. Kwong explained it to me once over afterschool soymilk and cookies: I was for sure the product of some tired, midweek missionary hookup, but for him Mom and Dad went all out. No candles or rose petals, champagne, strawberries—no none of it. Wouldn’t have had time to uncork shit the way he said it went down. The legend, as he told it, was waist deep in details my gradeschooler brain didn’t get, positions, costumes, colours, raw conceits so unreal I was forced to slap together my own painful understanding of “the big bang.” Burned into my head was this image of Dad, shielded only by a multipurpose bagpipe and fistfuls of man fur, battle-axing away at a plate-twirling contortionist slathered in rouge and wailing Peking opera, Mom.I always said no when she tried to teach me tai chi, got freaked out every time she got low with a snake creeps down in the living room, especially when dad was around. And thank christ I never saw the old man hoist a caber, get all red-faced and grunty prior to launching one of those gigantic highland wang replacements. Kwong couldn’t know the mark his whacked-out story left. He had a way of getting to people, no doubt, but I don’t think he ever really knew what the hell he was doing. If he did, he would’ve made it to the show, and Ali and I wouldn’t have found ourselves in the backseat of a cruiser.It smelled strong of ass and lemon wipes, the stank of petty crime and lives timing down,  and we were stuck in it, cuffed and chained hands to feet because Nutjob wouldn’t admit he’d overpacked on the bracelets. We weren’t the busload of perps he’d been hoping for, the bust that would have made him bigger than the lone fucking ranger down at the station and earned him drinks on the boys for a month, but he was doing his best to take his disappointment out on us as we swerved through the dark and empty streets towards downtown.Getting hauled in was different than I’d imagined, just as scary but weirder most def. I’d always known it’d be thanks to Kwong, but I sort of figured he’d be sat next to me, laughing near-blackout or bringing the fucking ruckus. Not that I wasn’t glad for Ali, my best friend and more of a brother on most counts. But this way I had to take point, be the one to make this seem like less of a deal than it was and get us through the night. Not easy considering I’d already flipped through the outcomes; all involved parents and none seemed promising.I looked over at Ali and asked about his stoner-grin.“I’m good, Run-san,” he said. “No sweat. Chain me gat me, cuff me cap me,” he rhymed, “tax me kill me, you know I always will be…”He waited for me to bust the rest but I wasn’t having it.“Chinktastic, muthafucka, chinktastic!”All him. Kid stunted in his chains like they were just part of his shit, flipping signs and posing from our fake leather turdbench like all was right in the world.“Shut it, fish!” Nutjob weighed in. “Goddammit. Not in hell yet, are we?” He sucked teeth and looked hard at Ali. “We’re on our way, though, by christ.”Nutjob glanced back at the road, cranked the wheel to avoid a line of pylons or maybe take them out. They thudded soft and dead against the bumper and I twisted to see the flock of orange cones skip over the curb and away into the night. My guts clamped. Nutjob started in again with the raving and laid harder into the gas.“Just one big knot of dicks since 8/08. Can’t take a piss no more without it being yellow.”He grimaced accusingly into the rearview like we’d caused the ApeRising ourselves, like the broken bones and bloodspillage and all the change ever since was on us. With a little math he’d have known me and Ali were minor shorties on that eighth month’s eighth day, in that first hour of the Ape. But the new sky over all of us—Ape and Neck and civilian alike—sat more right with some than with others.My thoughts went to Ros and the conspiracy tip she’d been on—I never knew her to be one of those hysterical types, far from it, so the fact that something had her going raised eyebrows with me. It was just a text, wasn’t it? A wind-up deal from some beatbunny with google, a burner and a hangover Monday? Some details were missing. We’d get to them if we got a minute to talk, if I didn’t suffocate in the shitfog washing over me.Ali hummed quiet. I watched as his grin gave way to a deathface—he swallowed hard to get rid of it, then slowly the grin reappeared. He settled into this pattern, one I was familiar with. It cracked me up when our circumstances allowed for what I knew was coming—outdoors or in range of a big empty bucket, say. But knocking around sweaty in back of a runaway copmobile was like a bad game of beer roulette: just a matter of time until the explosion.* * *

Born and raised in Red Deer, Alberta, Jon has an MA in creative writing from the University of Toronto and is a former editorial intern at The Walrus. His work has been previously published in Ricepaper Magazine. Chinkstar is his first novel.* * *Thank you to Coach House Books, especially Heidi Waechtler, for giving us this sneak peek of Chinkstar, which will be published next month. If you’re interested in reading more, sign up on the Chinkstar book page to get an email as soon as it’s in stock!