| Chin’s killing, forty years ago, has inspired documentaries, television, young-adult books, and countless works of scholarship. What do we want from his story, and the people who tell it?  Illustration by Ran Zheng; Source photograph courtesy The Estate of Vincent and Lily Chin In June of 1982, Vincent Chin was a twenty-seven year-old draftsman, working in the auto industry in metro Detroit, when he was chased by two white men to a McDonald’s parking lot and beaten unconscious with a baseball bat, following a fight at a nearby strip club. He died four days later. As Hua Hsu explores in a deeply considered and evocative new piece, Chin’s killing and the quest for justice in his name “had a galvanizing effect on Asian American communities throughout the eighties” and has become an iconic presence in “virtually any discussion of Asian American history, meaningful across political and geographical divides.” Marking the anniversary of Chin’s death, Hsu examines the ways in which the story remains “a kind of political Rorschach test”—with people taking their preferred lessons from the events—and speaks to activists, artists, and others to restore the identity and complexity of a young man whose life was cut short. —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s coverage of the history of race in America. Subscribe today » | 
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