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Remembering the Dissonance : Melancholic Memories in wAve and The Piano Teacher

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2010, 23(3), pp.145-173
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Taehyung Kim 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the melancholic representation of Asian American loss common to two Korean American dramatists, Sung Rno and Julia Cho. The two plays discussed, wAve and The Piano Teacher, interpret Asian American history not only through their sympathetic portrayal of the struggle of living as a minority but also through a wider scope on the American cultural and sociopolitical landscape. Not much can be further said regarding individual and familial suffering on the American stage, considering the country’s history of domestic drama, but what endows these two plays with specificity concerning the psychic condition and their particular historical situation is a cluster of insights that have been formulated in recent Asian American drama. The essay focuses on a type of racial melancholia nurtured in America and analyzes the political motives, economic mechanisms and ideological relations embedded in the familial enclave. It attempts to uncover a hidden underside of violence and wounding. The structure of symptoms observed in the protagonists of two Asian American narratives makes visible the submerged reasons that have led to their suffering and to the identity crises that are symbolized by the initials of their marital names “M” and “K.” Their worlds, which exist only in relation to the dominant social structure, involve a latent repression that hides an inaccessible source of individual and communal existence. This repression never lets the protagonists survive without an ensuing sense of loss. Yet, the two plays do not lay claim solely to Asian American history; rather, they concern Asian and American identity. Being in between cultures signifies the very state of Asian subjects, and this theme is continually invoked by the narratives’ melancholic reflections on loss.

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