Bigotry on Broadway

Carla Blank, Ishmael Reed

• Publisher: Baraka Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781771862585
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

How do intellectuals and scholars feel about how members of their ethnic groups are portrayed on Broadway? How would we know? Very few of them have the power to rate which plays and musicals are worthy and which ones are flops, and above all, be heard or read. The American critical fraternity is an exclusive club. Carla Blank and Ishmael Reed invited informed and accomplished writers, women and man, who are rarely heard from to comment about how ethnic groups are depicted on Broadway. The contributors are Lonely Christopher, Tommy Curry, Jack Foley, Emil Guillermo, Claire J. Harris, Yuri Kageyama, Soraya McDonald, Nancy Mercado, Aimee Phan, Elizabeth Theobold Richards, Shawn Wong and David Yearsley, in addition to the editors. Under review are Madame Butterfly, the Irving Berlin songbook, Oklahoma, South Pacific, Miss Saigon, Flower Drum Song, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Color Purple, The Book of Mormon, West Side Story and Hamilton. All of these musicals received enthusiastic reviews from the exclusive club of media critics. With Bigotry on Broadway, readers will get the views of those who have been excluded from the club. They will find themselves asking, "Why has it taken so long?"

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Foreword: Is Broadway about Dollars and Cents?
• Great Moments with Mr. Hamilton
• Making Mister: Anti-Black Misandry in Alice Walker’s Portrayal of Black Men in The Color Purple
• Irving Berlin: Bigotry and Brilliance
• Neither Cockeyed nor an Optimist about South Pacific
• The Book of Mormon Is Racist—Why Isn’t Anyone Talking about It?30
• Why Butterfly Should Stop Committing Literary Hara-kiri
• The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!*
• Everyone Tells My West Side Story but Me
• South Pacific, Miss Saigon, Soft Power and Me
• When You Mess with Creation Myths, the Knives Come Out1
• Responding to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson & Claiming the Power of Native Voice
• Dance and Song Before Story: Was Flower Drum Song a Phantasy?
• Oklahoma!: As American as Apple Pie and Broken Treaties32
• Appendix
• About the Contributors