Daniel Dae Kim and Ryan Eggold in 'Yellow Face' on Broadway.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist argues that David Henry Hwang's play makes one think about "who belongs in America and who gets to define who is American, or American enough, for whom."
In a recent viral video, a middle school bully is heard asking: “Where did that little ching chong go?”
The bully’s target is a five-year-old son of Chinese immigrants, seen and heard in the video trying to hide and asking to be saved.
Yes, kids can say nasty or mean things all the time, words and phrases they learn and pick up from somewhere, but this felt different. As I watched the video, I kept thinking, this kid is a mere “Yellowface” to the bully.
In Hollywood terms, Yellowface is to Asian people, particularly of East Asian descent, what Blackface is to Black people: an offensive practice of performance and mimicry. Examples abound, in varying degrees, from Jonathan Pryce, a white Welsh actor, wearing prosthetics to play a Eurasian character in the musical Miss Saigon, to the white British actor Tilda Swinton, who in the Marvel movie Doctor Strange was cast as The Ancient One, a character in the comic books as an elderly Asian man.