Department of English

This project interrogates Asian/American performances that act as sites of refusal. Starting with the theatrical works of Nathan Ramos and Chay Yew, I read these texts paying close attention to stage directions and other forms of subtext. Utilizing Summer Kim Lee’s concept of asociality, I subsume these acts of submissiveness and inscrutability as resistance for the texts’ queer characters. Honing in on their performance of babbling/bumbling/bubbling, I reimagine these nonsensical forms as acts of resistance that seek to reframe the harmful ways Asian/American stereotypes are read. From tracing the origins of babble to subsuming theories of the literary rant, this paper provides a glimpse into a unique methodology for analyzing the subtext of Asian/American literature. From there I pivot to Asian/American performance outside the stage. Focusing on the phenomenon birthed out of the pandemic known as the Auntie Sewing Squad (ASS) created by Kristia Wong, my work recontextualizes the otherwise mundane task of mask making as radical performance acts of caregiving. Reframing the labor as revolutionary care work, I uplift the mutual aid of the ASS as a finite subculture of care that superseded governmental aid and resisted hegemonic ideologies of love. Together, my case studies show that in the face of world-ending epidemics from AIDS to COVID-19, how Asian/American performances continue to resist, cultivate, and thrive.