Lenore Chinn was born in San Francisco, California in the United States, a second generation Chinese-American. Both her mother and father were raised in the Chinatown.[citation needed] Her father was a mathematician.[2] The Chinn's taught their children traditional Cantonese and American cultures and values.[citation needed] When Chinn was two years old, her family moved to the Richmond District of San Francisco.[2] The Chinn family was one of the first Chinese-American's to move to the area dominated by white, middle-class neighbors.[2] Because of their position as a minority in a primarily Caucasian area, the family taught Lenore and her younger brother about Chinesestereotypes.[citation needed] In an interview conducted by Rudy Lemcke in 2001, Chinn said, "I grew up with a family model, which offered simultaneously a traditional Chinese cultural framework of community and family, along with the opportunity to embrace non-traditional and non-Asian ideas. In short, my life's journey became a cross-pollination of other world views."[3] These teachings would influence Chinn's artwork.[4] Today, the Richmond District's largest ethnic group is Chinese.[citation needed]
^"Lenore Chinn". Queer Cultural Center. Retrieved 2016-04-30.
^FitzSimons, Casey (February 1997). "Families: rebuilding, reinventing, recreating' at the Euphrat Museum of Art". Artweek. 28: 1 – via Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson).
Latimer, Tirza True, Moira Roth, Valerie Soe and Jennifer Banta. Cultural Confluences: The Art of Lenore Chinn. San Francisco: Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (2011). ISBN145075127X
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society, Fifth Edition. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc. (2012). ISBN978-0-500-20405-4