Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- 12 Documenting the Third World Student Strike, the Antiwar Movement, and the Emergence of Second-Wave Feminism from Asian American Perspectives
- 13 The Art of the Asian American Movement’s Social Protest Performance
- 14 Inventing Identity: The Manifestos of Pioneering Asian American Literature Anthologies
- 15 Maxine Hong Kingston, Feminism, and Postmodern Literature
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - The Art of the Asian American Movement’s Social Protest Performance
from Part III - The Asian American Movement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- 12 Documenting the Third World Student Strike, the Antiwar Movement, and the Emergence of Second-Wave Feminism from Asian American Perspectives
- 13 The Art of the Asian American Movement’s Social Protest Performance
- 14 Inventing Identity: The Manifestos of Pioneering Asian American Literature Anthologies
- 15 Maxine Hong Kingston, Feminism, and Postmodern Literature
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on Harry Elam's theory of social protest theater to galvanize support and direct sympathizers toward campaigns of political resistance. Looking at the musical trio A Grain of Sand and the theater work of Sining Bayan's political performances provides an opportunity to analyze movement art beyond the written text to foreground movement art as a social experience, a form of interaction between people, sound, and space. A Grain of Sand's performance of Asian American as ordinary American is a radical re-embodiment of Americanness. A Grain of Sand casts Asian Americans' ordinariness as Americans emerging within histories of racism, US imperialism and capitalism. The chapter also focuses on the internationalist politics of Bayan's political plays to underscore the progressive transnational political practice at work in Asian American movement art. The theater of Bayan puts in focus how theater constituted political action for organizing against President Ferdinand Marcos's martial law.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 237 - 253Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015