novel, The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, which tells
the story of three generations of Japanese-Ameri-
can women interned together in the camps.
Bibliography
Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Intro-
duction to the Writings and Their Social Context.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, and Amy Ling. Reading the
Literatures of Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1992.
Eric G. Waggoner
Houston, Velina Hasu (1957– )
The daughter of Lemo Houston, a mixed-race
African-American and Blackfoot Indian career
soldier from Alabama, and Setsuko Takechi of
Matsuyama, Japan, Valina Hasu Houston was
born in international waters bound for the United
States. From the moment of her birth, she found
herself between cultures and countries, which has
become a sustaining theme of Houston’s body of
work for the stage.
In 1959 Houston moved to the United States
with her parents, sister Hilda Rika Hatsuyo, and
brother George Adam Houston, who was orphaned
by World War II and adopted by Houston’s family
during the U.S. occupation. Houston was primar-
ily raised in the military community of Junction
City, Kansas, near the Fort Riley Army Compound.
Surrounded by immigrant military wives and their
children from countries such as Japan, Germany,
Austria, France, and Italy, Houston’s midwestern
American childhood was both international and
isolated. Estranged from their Japanese and Amer-
ican relatives alike, the Houston family found
raising their biracial children in the Midwest chal-
lenging. Lemo Houston’s early death further de-
stabilized the family’s already difficult settlement
in American society.
Houston went on to attend Kansas State Uni-
versity, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors in
1979 with a B.A. in journalism, mass communi-
cations, and theater and with a minor in philoso-
phy. Houston relocated permanently to California
after her mother remarried. In 1981 she completed
an M.A. in theater arts with a specialization in
screenwriting from the University of California,
Los Angeles, and later earned a Ph.D. from the
University of Southern California’s School of Cin-
ema-Television. In 1982 Houston won the Lor-
raine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and in both
1984 and 1987, she was appointed as a Rockefeller
Foundation Playwriting Fellow. She gave birth to
a son and a daughter and parented two more sons
through her marriage to Peter H. Jones from Man-
chester, England.
Based in Los Angeles, Houston is one of the
most widely produced contemporary Asian-
American playwrights. Her best-known pieces,
Asa Ga Kimashita (1981), American Dreams
(1984) and Te a (1987), are based on her parents’
personal history. Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has
Broken) tells the story of a Japanese woman and
an African-American soldier stationed in Japan
who fall in love during the years just after World
War II. They overcome the concerns of the wom-
an’s Japanese parents, who think the Americans
occupying Japan are taking away not only their
daughter but also their beloved culture and life-
style. American Dreams follows this same young
couple to the United States, where they attempt
to begin their American lives in New York City.
Moving in with the soldier’s brother, the couple
negotiates the complexities of racism and family
relations.
Her most honored play, Tea, closes Houston’s
trilogy, and the play has found audiences in the
United States and as far off as Japan and Taiwan.
While mainly drawing on her mother’s memories,
Houston also compiled extensive interviews with
Japanese women who married American military
men. Te a follows four Japanese war brides living
on a military base in Kansas. Together they remi-
nisce while performing a tea ceremony in memory
of their friend Himiko, a fellow war bride who
had recently committed suicide after killing her
husband.
Houston’s body of work reveals her long-
standing emphasis on tolerance and cultural un-
derstanding. Pieces such as Kokoro (True Heart)
(1994) highlight the differences in Japanese and114 Houston, Velina Hasu