Midterm Study Guide

Lonny Kaneko, “The Shoyu Kid”

• the japanese concentration camps really destroyed the japanese’s self identities and familial structure, kind of breaking them in almost

Fire Island (2022)

Baby Cobra (2016)

Rosalind Chou, “Why Asian American Sexual Politics?” (race, gender, and sexual construction, white supremacy)

• the white west, as the people in power, reduce Asian Americans to sexual stereotypes in order to maintain their position in power.

• they change the stereotypes based on what they need in order to maintain that hierarchy

• at first, they stereotyped the “chinese man” to dangerous and predatory in order to keep them below the white male

• then they reduced asian men to asexual, sexless creatures in order for them to never climb above white supremacy

• asian women are either seen as sexual objects, or completely innocent, something for the white man to conquer

Celine Parreñas Shimizu, “The Bind of Representation: Performing and Consuming Hypersexuality in ‘Miss Saigon’”

hypersexuality

representation

Euni Kim. “‘An Impression of Asian People’: Asian American Comedy, Rhetoric, and Identity in Ali Wong’s Standup Comedy” (Terms: comedy, polyphony, polysemy, impersonation)

comedy

polyphony

• how comedians kind of create a different identity/persona on stage that may not represent their actual self, in order to effectively communicate a joke

polysemy

• the performer adjusts to how the audience might respond

  • if majority white, vs majority asian

• the audience has the power to interpret the joke in different ways

  • they can decode the joke from the signs that are presented to them

  • based on their life perspectives

impersonation

Loubna Qutami and Omar Zahzah, “The War of Words: Language as an Instrument of Palestinian National Struggle.” (Terms: Zionism, democracy, violence)

zionism

democracy

violence/terrorism