SOURCE: A review of The Chickencoop Chinaman, in The New Yorker, Vol. XL VIII, No. 18, 24 June 1972, p. 46.

Oliver offers a positive evaluation of The Chickencoop Chinaman, judging it a "moving, funny, pain-filled, sarcastic, bitter, ironic play. "

Frank Chin, a poet and dramatist, brings us the first news (theatrically speaking) of the Chinese Americans in our midst in a moving, funny, pain-filled, sarcastic, bitter, ironic play called The Chickencoop Chinaman, which almost bursts its seams with passion and energy. It will be playing for the lucky subscribers to the American Place only until June 24th. Mr. Chin's hero, Tam Lum, was born in California. He is, by trade, a documentary-movie maker, and he talks and talks in a furious and dazzling eruption of verbal legerdemain ("I'm tired of talking, but when I stop it's so goddam awful") that reveals, as if in a blaze of Fourth of July fireworks...