Berkeley Repertory Theatre and was restaged in
1989 by Playwrights Horizons in New York.
Despite their common grounds as struggling
Asian-American actors in a white-dominated en-
tertainment industry, the two protagonists of the
play, Vincent Chang and Bradley Yamashita, rep-
resent two polarities of the Asian-American ex-
perience: assimilation and ethnic consciousness.
Vincent is a seasoned veteran of the stage and
film (with an Oscar nomination under his belt)
who prides himself on never turning down a role,
however demeaning and stereotypical. Although
Vincent was his childhood idol, the young and
idealistic Bradley nevertheless passionately clings
to the conviction that “every time you do one of
those demeaning roles, the only thing lost is your
dignity.”
During their brief initial encounter at a Holly-
wood Hills party, Bradley muses, “I think the two
of us meeting is very important. The young and
the old. We can learn from each other.” The plot
revolves around the friendship that blossoms be-
tween the two and the lessons that they inevitably
learn from each other.
In Bradley, full of purposeful vitality and deter-
mination, Vincent sees himself 35 years ago when
he first embarked on an acting career. In the end,
Vincent turns down a lucrative but typecast role
in a major motion picture in order to star in an
ethnic-based independent film about a Japanese-
American family. Bradley, born Shigeo Nakata, be-
gins to embrace his ethnic identity, which he had
consciously negated in his ongoing pursuit of the
American dream. Bradley realizes that what strides
current artists such as him have been able to make
owe much to the personal dedication and sacrifices
made by early pioneers such as Vincent. Ironically,
Bradley accepts the very role that Vincent rejects,
in the belated realization that, as exemplified in
Vincent’s past career, the Asian-American actor’s
uphill battle for recognition must necessarily be
paved with negotiations and compromises of per-
sonal principles.
The primary structure of Yankee Dawg You Die,
a series of elaborate colloquies between the two
dramatis personae, is interlaced with dramatic
monologues, dream sequences, and lively song/
dance skits. The play is also intertextually rich
with excerpts from past television, movie, and play
scripts, some reenacted verbatim but others satiri-
cally modified.
The play closes with a fervent outcry, “Why
can’t you hear what I’m saying? Why can’t you see
me as I really am?” This may well be an apt battle
cry for all Asian-American writers across different
literary genres who must endure and negotiate the
inequities of a still discrimination-ridden society
to finally find their voices and, more important,
have their voices heard.
Kihan LeeYau, John (1950– )
John Yau was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, to a
Chinese mother of the Shanghai aristocracy and
a father who was the son of an English mother
and a Chinese father. Yau’s parents refused to teach
him Chinese, so he felt isolated from the children
of Boston’s Chinatown; yet he did not fit into the
white schools he attended, either, because of his
mixed racial heritage. His works of poetry and
prose often try to reconcile, or at least understand,
the feelings of being neither entirely Chinese nor
entirely American.
Yau moved to New York City in 1975 to study
with poet/art critic John Ashbery. Under Ashbery’s
tutelage, Yau developed a career as a freelance art
critic and began to experiment with ways of creat-
ing identity in his poetry without relying on auto-
biography. Along with writing many essays about
obscure artists, Yau’s early work as a poet incor-
porated both visual art techniques and references
to artists and their works. One collection of these
“painterly poems” is “The School of Johns,” which
appears in Radiant Silhouette (1998). With artists
and photographers, Yau also collaborated on sev-
eral volumes of poetry such as Postcards from Trakl
(1994) with prints by Bill Jensen and Berlin Dipty-
chon (1995) with photographs by Bill Barrette.
In The Sleepless Night of Eugene Delacroix (1980),
Yau shows the influence of painters such as Jasper
Johns and Andy Warhol, both of whom produced
works in series. Like them, Yau frequently creates332 Yau, John