Oriental, Black, and White

“Using an eclectic approach, Oriental, Black, and White details a number of historically important examples of interracial intersections onstage, unmooring conventional approaches to understanding race in America and providing a timely and much-needed story of racial representation and impersonation in American cultural history.”—Esther Kim Lee, Duke University

“Full of fascinating theatrical case studies, Oriental, Black, and White traverses a wide terrain to show us the central role of orientalism and yellowface performance in the evolution of American minstrelsy into a genteel art form.”—Edlie Wong, University of Maryland

“An exciting and necessary contribution to the rapidly growing field of early Asian American theatre studies. . . . Lee advances the bold argument that theatrical orientalism has scripted intertwined racial habits such as white supremacy, African American racial uplift, and ‘Oriental’ exoticization. Her book is the most comprehensive attempt at documenting this white-Black-Asian racial triangulation on the nineteenth-century American stage. It should be read by scholars of theatre history, musical theatre, Black studies, and Asian American studies.”—Modern Drama

“Lee assembles a rich array of case studies at the intersections of black and oriental stage aesthetics located primarily in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century US. . . . Lee destabilizes presumed certainties about racial habits across time and for this reason will appeal to any readers interested in stereotypes’ functions of both channeling and challenging what is legible onstage.”—Ethnic and Third World Literatures

“An insightful look at the centrality of racial impersonation in U.S. theater. Western historians should find it a useful addition to their conversations on race and labor in popular culture.”—Western Historical Quarterly