Oriental, Black, and White

The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater

Josephine Lee

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781469669625, 9781469669618
• eBook ISBN: 9781469669632
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

In this book, Josephine Lee looks at the intertwined racial representations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American theater. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musicals, both white and African American performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Lee shows how blackface types were often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants, while the oriental marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental. These conflicting racial connotations were often intermingled in actual stage performance, as stage productions contrasted nostalgic characterizations of plantation slavery with the figures of the despotic sultan, the seductive dancing girl, and the comic Chinese laundryman. African American performers also performed common oriental themes and characterizations, repurposing them for their own commentary on Black racial progress and aspiration. The juxtaposition of orientalism and black figuration became standard fare for American theatergoers at a historical moment in which the color line was rigidly policed. These interlocking cross-racial impersonations offer fascinating insights into habits of racial representation both inside and outside the theater.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Oriental, Black, and White
• 1. The Racial Refashioning of Aladdin
• 2. The Lesser Roles of Ira Aldridge
• 3. Blackface Minstrelsy’s Japanese Turns
• 4. The Tricky Servant in Blackface and Yellowface
• 5. The Chinese Laundry Sketch
• 6. “Maybe Now and Then a Chinaman”: African American Impersonators and Chinese Specialties
• 7. Divas and Dancers: Oriental Femininity and African American Performance
• 8. Oriental Frolics and Racial Uplift in the Early African American Musical
• 9. Pleasure Domes and Journeys Home: In Dahomey, Abyssinia, The Children of the Sun, and Shuffle Along
• 10. Fantasy Islands: Staging the Philippines, 1900–1914
• Conclusion: Racial Puzzles, Chop Suey, and Juanita Long Hall in Flower Drum Song
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index