THE NEW YORKER -- Alongside their own writing, they dug for older works, scouring libraries and used-book stores for predecessors. They felt as though American culture had wrecked their brains, leaving many of their peers awash in self-contempt. In the process of excavation and creation, they were testing out their own theories of what this new identity could mean. Reed called them the Four Horsemen of Asian American literature. Chin, Chan, Inada and Wong founded the Combined Asian American Resources Project in order to preserve the literary history that they were piecing together. They soon felt that they had found as much as anyone had.
Chan continued to write fiction and teach literature at San Francisco State University, where he had started an Asian American Studies program.