Synopses & Reviews
"A gay, punk-rock Chinese American in the age of AIDS, Chin confronts all manner of hypocrisy."—San Francisco Chronicle
98 Wounds is a series of improbably linked stories that reimagines and reconciles the abject, the outlaw, the ostracized, the misfits, and the cranky contrarians among us.
Gay people have never been as free—or divided—as in today's society. As the gay majority surges into the mainstream, a social construct has emerged depicting "Good Gays" and "Bad Gays." Endless mythmaking goes into dehumanizing the Bad.
Barebackers, poz sexpigs, meth-users, sexual libertines, and fetishists have been blamed, shamed, and disdained. Any vicious untruth or loathsome rumor about them—even those contrary to science or common sense—is accepted without question.
The characters populating 98 Wounds run roughshod in a city spiraling towards collapse. They broker urgent desires in constant pursuit of identity, obsession, rituals of hope, even the simplicity of an ordinary life. They unwaveringly root for their own understanding of belonging, contentment, pleasure, and love.
In 98 Wounds, either we are all damned, or we are all saved: a sentiment that speaks to all cultures in these uncertain times.
Award-winning writer Justin Chin is the author of six books, including Bite Hard (Manic D Press) and Mongrel (St. Martin's Press). His works have been widely anthologized. Born in Malaysia, raised and educated in Singapore, shipped to the United States by way of Hawaii, he currently lives in San Francisco, California.
Review
"Justin Chin is really one of our greatest writers. There is no heartache, no abject striving for connection, no collapse of the body or anguish of the mind invulnerable from the barging in of the absurd, the hyperblast of ever-present pop culture, a queen's irony, a cluck of the tongue and a shake of the head. He regards his pain all of our pain with stoic reverence, while simultaneous slipping a whoopie cushion under our collective ass. He's a master." Michelle Tea
Synopsis
98 Wounds contains improbably-linked stories re-imagining and reconciling the abject, the outlaw, the ostracized, and the cranky contrarians among us.
Synopsis
"A gay, punk-rock Chinese American in the age of AIDS, Chin confronts all manner of hypocrisy."San Francisco Chronicle
Through intertwined short stories, 98 Wounds dissects the inexorable dualities present in every moment that matters: pleasure and pain, contentment and longing, mercy and brutality, living and dying. In between all this, solace, understanding, and occasional regret if not resolution can be found. 98 Wounds takes the reader on a defiant road trip beset with contrition potholes and agitation detours to a place where absurdity and horror feed on each other. In 98 Wounds, either we are all damned, or we are all saved: a sentiment that speaks to all cultures in these uncertain times.
Award-winning writer Justin Chin is the author of six books, including Bite Hard (Manic D Press) and Mongrel (St. Martin's Press). His works have been widely anthologized. Born in Malaysia, raised and educated in Singapore, shipped to the United States by way of Hawaii, he currently lives in San Francisco, California.
About the Author
Justin Chin is the author of three collections of poetry, Gutted, Bite Hard, and Harmless Medicine, which was a Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award (BABRA) finalist. He is also thr author of three collectionsof essays, Burden of Ashes (Alyson), Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks (St. Martin's), and Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Suspect Thoughts). Gutted won the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award in 2007 and was Lambda Literary Award finalist.