Diana Chang

Diana Chang
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
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Diana Chang (Chinese: 張粲芳; 1924 – February 19, 2009) was a Chinese American novelist and poet.^[1] 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.^[2]

Chang was born in New York City to a Chinese father, Kuang Chi Chang, and Eurasian mother, Eva Mary Lee Wah Chang, but spent her youngest years in China, including Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai.^[1][2] 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.^[3] While an undergraduate at Barnard, Chang had 3 of her poems published by Poetry Magazine, including her work "At The Window."^[1]

After graduation, Chang worked as a book editor at three reputable publishing houses: Avon Books, Bobbs-Merrill, A. A. Wyn).^[1][4] She also worked as the editor for the PEN-sponsored journal American Pen and as a creative writing teacher at Barnard College.^[2]

Chang's best known work is The Frontiers of Love. Her work has more recently been read in terms of postmodernity and hybridity.^[2] 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.^[2] While at Barnard College, Chang published her poem, Mood in Modern Poetry Association's Poetry.^[3][5]

Chang lived in Water Mill, NY with her husband David Hermann.^[1]

She died on February 19, 2009.

• 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)

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

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

• List of Asian American writers

• 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.