This introduction to Asian American theatre charts ten of the most pivotal moments in the history of the Asian diaspora in the USA and how those moments have been reflected in theatre.
1. Staging Minor Feelings and Rehearsing Reparation
Amy B. Huang
2. Staging Exclusion: Immigration and Exploitation in Asian American Theatre
James McMaster
3. Theater of the American Tropics
Lucy MSP Burns
4. Dusty Barracks and Empty Stages: Revisiting the Mass Exclusion and Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II
Ju Yon Kim
5. From "Orientals" to Asian Americans
Eunha Na
6. Instruction Pieces: The Emergence of Asian American Performance Art
Joshua Chambers-Letson
7. Southeast Asian American Theatre: Refugee Memories and Enacting Home
Sean Metzger
8. Yellowface and Asian American Actors
Esther Kim Lee
9. Grief and Terror in Post-9/11 Plays by South Asian and Arab American Playwrights
Dan Bacalzo
10. Staging Asian America in a History of Present Illness
Christine Mok
Josephine Lee is Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota and the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Her other books include Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater, The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage.