Afong's Room: Dis/Orienting Asian and Asian American Performance
Issue No. 1
Inaugural issue of the journal: pieces reflecting on the 2024-2025 season of the UMass Fine Arts Center Asian and Asian American Arts and Cultures Program
By Editorial TeamIn 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.
By Michelle Jiaying Li“Barron and Lahiry cleverly and intentionally performed pieces that are part of the Western canon and placed them right next to living composers’ works they commissioned and are coming directly from communities that have been historically exoticized or simplified by the dominant Western classical world. This act of critical juxtaposition creates friction and recontextualizes the canon.”
By Michael Sakamoto“the whole concept of the show #foodbankinfluencer is that this is the American musical I was meant to write, about my love story with a food bank, and was pretty much the exact opposite of being a crazy rich Asian.”
By Erica Li“The performers’ embodiment gives active re-encountering of the past to allow for liberatory reimagination and recognition of these otherwise hidden realities.”
