Like many other immigrants who have come to melting-pot America,
Japanese Americans have experienced radical shifts in fortune. From the
farms and small businesses founded by the first arrivals in the early
years of this century, to the trauma of the relocation camps during
World War II, to the search for new values in a heterogeneous society,
each generation of Japanese Americans has had to confront its own
challenges.
Exploring the relationships among the Issei (first generation), Nisei
(second generation), and Sansei (third generation), playwright Philip
Kan Gotanda has crafted four powerful dramas. Japanese American family
life is at the heart of the plays, from elder traditionalists and Nisei
still troubled by the message of the wartime camps, to women seeking new
roles and brash youth seizing opportunities in a larger society. The
four plays included are "Song for a Nisei Fisherman", "Fish Head Soup",
"The Wash", and "Yankee Dawg You Die."
Throughout these dramas, many facets of Japanese American life are
revealed as compelling characters interact. Gotanda understands and
sensitively depicts the stresses this traditional culture endures, not
only in its relation to the heterogeneous society that surrounds it but
also among the generations that comprise it. An introduction by Michael
Omi, assistant professor of Asian American Studies at the University of
California, Berkeley, considers the sources of the plays in Gotanda's
personal history.
