Asian American Plays for a New Generation

Plays for a New Generation

Josephine Lee, Donald Eitel, Rick Shiomi, Josephine Lee, Donald Eitel, Rick Shiomi

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781439905173
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Asian American plays provide an opportunity to think about how racial issues are engaged through theatrical performance physical contact, bodily labor, and fleshly desire as well as through the more standard elements of plot, setting, characterization, staging, music, and action.

Asian American Plays for a New Generation showcases seven exciting new plays that dramatize timely themes that are familiar to Asian Americans. The works variously address immigration, racism, stereotyping, identity, generational tensions, assimilation, and upward mobility as well as post-9/11 paranoia, racial isolation, and adoptee experiences.

Each of these works engages directly and actively with Asian American themes through performance to provide an important starting point for building relationships, raising political awareness, and creating active communities that can foster a sense of connection or even rally individuals to collective action.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Indian Cowboy
• 2. Walleye Kid: The Musical
• 3. Happy Valley
• 4. Asiamnesia
• 5. Sia(b)
• 6. Bahala Na (Let It Go)
• 7. Ching Chong Chinaman
• Afterword
• Contributors