ABSTRACT
Asians in the United States have been presented both as exotic objects of romance and as the demonized “yellow peril.” James McMaster traces the ways that hostility developed against Chinese and other Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, resulting in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and subsequent exclusion laws. His chapter marks out how Asian American history is a history of exploitation and exclusion, and analyzes four plays that stage the milestone era of official Chinese exclusion. Through close readings of David Henry Hwang’s The Dance and the Railroad, Genny Lim’s Bitter Cane and Paper Angels, and a brief engagement with Ping Chong’s Chinoiserie, the chapter models the critiques of racial capitalism and white nationalism embedded in late-twentieth-century Asian American theatre, while also exposing what Asian American theatre can offer audiences who seek to survive similar systemic injustices in the present.
