Swallowing the Tempest

When Yo Yoshida, a 25 year old Japanese American woman in Wakako Yamauchi's play 12-1-A, laments her fate as a single woman interned during World War Two and consigned to the bachelor women['s] barracks, fellow internee Michio (Mitch) Tanaka chides, That's what you get for being a woman.' Yo's response points out the multiple forces which shape and delimit her existence, not only within the literal confines of the military relocation camp, but in the larger context of U.S. American culture as well: Yeah, for being a woman, she dryly observes. being single. For being Japanese. I think someone up there dealt a stacked deck (50). These forcesracism, sexism and nationalism-not only function to marginalize Asian American women in/from U.S. American society: they work to constitute the borders of U.S. American identity as white Anglo-American, male and heterosexual by delineating a national not-self through a process of abjection

Art · Art history · Context (archaeology · Culture of the United States · Literature · Nationalism · Political science · Sociology · Tempest · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Law