Negotiating “Otherness”: Conflict and Cooperation in Contemporary Asian Canadian Dramaturgies.

This paper proposes to examine the dramatic methods through which a number of Asian Canadian playwrights have articulated the “Otherness” of Asianness in contemporary English Canadian society. Such process of negotiation involves various nuances of conflict and cooperation in the works of the three playwrights I have selected to illustrate facets of this phenomenon: Marty Chan’s Mom, Dad, I’m Living with a White Girl; M. J. Kang’s Noran Bang. The Yellow Room, and Padma Viswanathan’s House of Sacred Cows. The very notion of Asian Canadian identity itself proves a highly fluid concept, whose boundaries are constantly repositioned. The notion of “Asian Canadian” resists homogenisation, as exemplified in the differing perspectives offered by Chan’s Chineseness, Kang’s Korean background, and Viswanathan’s Indian roots. Thematically and aesthetically, the three works analyzed here demonstrate patterns of conflict and cooperation. First, the uprooted protagonists’ search for belonging in their new Western environment, while initially suggesting conflict and alieneation, often culminates in an epiphanic process entailing a hybrid fusion of the characters’ dual cultural allegiances. Likewise, the fragmented structure of these plays combines elements derived from the tradition of Western stage realism with techniques derived from the protagonists’ Asian mother culture. This innovative blend results in hybrid aesthetics akin to a form of magic realism relying on Asian myths and legends. Thus, the artistic sophistication of the works analyzed suggests that Asian Canadian plays deserve their just recognition in the canon of English Canadian drama.