Afong’s Room

Voices and Sounds across Empires: a Postcolonial Reexamination on Classical Stages

By Michelle Jiaying Li 🎙️

In 1834, Afong Moy (Ah-Fong Moy) became the first recorded Asian woman to arrive in America and for years, she gained fame as “The Chinese Lady,” exhibited in a staged room. She was framed as a living embodiment of an imagined “orient” and this same pattern only continues. For centuries, Asian and Asian American artists have been positioned as spectacles, their individuality subsumed into subservient images constructed by the West.

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