A race so different
Subtitle: performance and law in Asian America
By: Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson
Series: Postmillennial pop; Postmillennial pop
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
ISBN-13: 9780814738399; 9780814769966
Subjects: Asian Americans; Asian Americans and mass media; Legal status, laws; History
Description: Taking a performance studies approach to understanding Asian American racial subjectivity, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson argues that the law influences racial formation by compelling Asian Americans to embody and perform recognizable identities in both popular aesthetic forms (such as theater, opera, or rock music) and in the rituals of everyday life. Tracing the production of Asian American selfhood from the era of Asian Exclusion through the Global War on Terror, A Race So Different explores the legal paradox whereby U.S. law apprehends the Asian American body as simultaneously excluded from and included within the national body politic. Bringing together broadly defined forms of performance, from artistic works such as Madame Butterfly to the Supreme Court's oral arguments in the Cambodian American deportation cases of the twenty-first century, this book invites conversation about how Asian American performance uses the stage to document, interrogate, and complicate the processes of racialization in U.S. law. Through his impressive use of a rich legal and cultural archive, Chambers-Letson articulates a robust understanding of the construction of social and racial realities in the contemporary United States.--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-257) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction. Performance, law, and the race so different; title: That may be Japanese law, but not in my country : Madame Butterfly and the problem of law; title: Justice for my son : staging reparative justice in Ping Chong's chinoiserie; title: Pledge of allegiance : performing patriotism in the Japanese American concentration camps; title: The nail that stands out : the political performativity of the Moriyuki Shimada scrapbook; title: Illegal immigrant acts : dengue fever and the racialization of Cambodian America; title: Conclusion. Virtually legal.