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Most people in Humboldt know of local philanthropist Betty Chinn, who has spent the last four decades working tirelessly to help serve our homeless community, and many might even be familiar with her harrowing life story, which has been written about by many local and national news sites. 

Now a more detailed account of the life and work of Chinn is available for those who would like to learn more about our local hero, in a new book written by Karen M. Price, The Gray Bird Sings: The Extraordinary Life of Betty Kwan Chinn, which was just released earlier this week. 

“It goes much deeper,” Chinn told the Outpost of the book during a phone interview on Friday afternoon. “There’s much [more] information about what happened to me.” 

The author, Price, and Chinn have had a relationship for many years, which Price said was sparked by her husband, a retired Presbyterian minister, who did a lot of work to support Chinn’s efforts to help the homeless. Price, a retired psychologist, had heard many of Chinn’s stories throughout the years and said she began writing them down about 15 years ago, thinking that she would someday publish them in a book. 

Price retired in 2018, and when COVID hit she felt that she finally had the time to write the full book, and about two years ago she started working closely with Chinn to complete the biography. Price understands that Chinn is a well-covered local figure and that some of the information in the book will not be new to many readers. 

“Some of it will be stories they’ve already heard, and some of the stories they will never have heard, because some of them [Betty] hasn’t publicly told,” Price told the Outpost in a phone interview. “But it’s also placing it in her family context and historical context in China with probably a little more thoroughgoing way than has been able to be done before. And then tying it in with her sense of mission and purpose and where that was born. It was born in her suffering.” 

The book details Chinn’s early life in China’s Guangdong province during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, and her spending years living on the streets after she was expelled from her home, her mother was jailed and her siblings were sent to labor camps.

The title, The Gray Bird Sings alludes to a pivotal memory of Chinn’s, a story that she has mentioned in past interviews, when she had a moment of hope while living in a childhood nightmare. The Red Guard had bound Chinn’s hands and feet and tied her to a tree near a garbage dump. Suffering physical torture and humiliation, Chinn was ready to accept death, until a little gray bird landed on her. 

An excerpt from the book’s introduction:

The bird stayed quietly on her shoulder, and somehow from tiny creature to tortured girl, eye to eye, a connection was made… As tiny as the gray bird was, the child was surprised to find that she could see it flying into the horizon for quite some time. The little girl sat up. In an entirely unusual occurrence, the guards had failed to come. If that gray bird could fly away, maybe she too could find a way to fly out of her situation. Maybe there was hope.

She chose to live another day.

Price said that she chose this story for the book’s title because it captures “fundamental events that happened to her during her years of torture, that gave her the hope to survive,” adding that she hopes the book “will inspire other people that have coped in the midst of great hardship.” 

Of course, the book does not only cover the hardships of Chinn’s past, but also follows her journey through moving to the United States, marriage, two children, her work with the homeless, opening the Betty Kwan Chinn Day Center and the international recognition she’s received. 

Chinn does not really love accepting recognition and always wants to bring the focus back to her work and the people she helps. So it is not surprising that she told the Outpost,  “This isn’t really about me. [It’s] about encouragement for other people who suffer.” 

But she did add that telling her stories for this book has helped her work through some still-emerging memories and take more time to work through the trauma she experienced. “I’m more and more coming out to myself,” she said. “I never see the puzzle of my life. I’m still searching for my life.” 

The Gray Bird Sings, published by The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt, can be downloaded for free through Cal Poly Humboldt, and the paperback is available for purchase on Amazon. Price and Chinn are taking no profits from the book and 100 percent of the sales go to funding the Betty Kwan Chinn Homeless Foundation. 

“I would like to say, and I will say this to anyone who asks, that writing this book was the greatest privilege of my life,” Price said. “I’m so grateful that she was willing to share her story with me.”