Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Made-up Asians
Yellowface During the Exclusion Era
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Why and how Asian characters have been represented by non-Asian actors on stage and screen
Made-Up Asians traces the history of yellowface, the theatrical convention of non-Asian actors putting on makeup and costume to look East Asian. Using specific case studies from European and U.S. theater, race science, and early film, Esther Kim Lee traces the development of yellowface in the U.S. context during the Exclusion Era (1862–1940), when Asians faced legal and cultural exclusion from immigration and citizenship. These caricatured, distorted, and misrepresented versions of Asians took the place of excluded Asians on theatrical stages and cinema screens. The book examines a wide-ranging set of primary sources, including makeup guidebooks, play catalogs, advertisements, biographies, and backstage anecdotes, providing new ways of understanding and categorizing yellowface as theatrical practice and historical subject. Made-Up Asians also shows how lingering effects of Asian exclusionary laws can still be seen in yellowface performances, casting practices, and anti-Asian violence into the 21st century.
About the Author:
Esther Kim Lee is Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University.
Press Reviews:
“An extraordinary, much-needed history of yellowface, focusing on its English origins through usage in classical Hollywood. The book makes an enormous contribution to theater studies, performance studies, film studies, Asian American studies, material cultures, and U.S. history. Like the author, I hope that this book will teach readers about yellowface and inspire them to take anti-racist action.”
—Donatella Galella, University of California, Riverside
“Written for a wide audience from theater aficionados to Asian American performance makers to academics, this timely book illuminates a fascinating archive of make-up conventions derived from instructional manuals and specific case studies from both the stage and the cinema.”
—Sean Metzger, University of California, Los Angeles
"What is notable and made clearer by Lee’s book is how that “science” and things like acting performances worked together to produce the racist ideas that persisted throughout society. ...Esther Lee helps us to recognize and understand how the persistence of these practices comes from their deep roots and connections to the ways that race has been constructed in the US across history."
—Ethnic and Racial Studies
See the publisher website: University of Michigan Press
> On a related topic:
Special Makeup Effects for Stage and Screen (2023)
Making and Applying Prosthetics
All for Beauty (2022)
Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era
Makeup Artistry for Film and Television (2020)
Your Tools for Success On-Set and Behind-the-Scenes
Special Makeup Effects (2013)
for Stage and Screen: Making and Applying Prosthetics
Making Faces, Playing God (2001)
Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup
I'd Just as Soon Kiss a Wookiee (2025)
Uncovering Racialized Desire in the Star Wars Galaxy
by Greg Carter
Borderland Brutalities (2024)
Violence and Resistance Along the Us-Mexico Borderlands in Literature, Film, and Culture
Subject: Sociology
Star Trek and the Tragic Hybrid (2024)
Children of Two Worlds from Spock to Soji
Subject: One Film > Star Trek (TV Series)
Colorization (2024)
One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World
by Wil Haygood
Subject: Sociology
Back
