Josephine Lee, "Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater" (UNC Press, 2022)

New Books in African American Studies · Sep 11, 2023 · 47m

The history of race in American theater is more complicated than you might think, writes Dr. Josephine Lee in Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater (UNC Press, 2022). Dr. Lee, a professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, examines the linked histories of orientalism, Blackface and Yellowface, in nineteenth and early twentieth century American theater, showing how identity creation and racialization occurred among multiple groups simultaneously. Within the context of large scale East Asian immigration to the West…