Marriage of Inconvenience: Japanese War Brides’ Cultural Identity in Houston’s Tea during post-war United States
Keywords:
War Brides, Acculturation, Acculturative Stress, RacismAbstract
After World War II, almost a million Japanese women immigrated to America as the wives of American GI soldiers. Cross-cultural and cross-racial marriages were prone to various disadvantages including the issue of adaptation of new culture. Maladaptation of war brides separates them, marginalizes them and compels them to remain tied to their ethnic culture and identity. John W. Berry’s theory of acculturation and adaptation defines several social factors of the “society of settlement” (Berry 1994) which result in cultural and psychological maladaptation of long-term immigrants. In this project, the persistent racism towards ethnic groups in American societies is analyzed which leads them towards marginality, alienation, “adaptation stress” and resultant adverse outcome. Berry’s four-fold model of acculturation is used as a heuristic tool to highlight the specific case of Japanese war brides in postwar America. The main purpose of this study is to explore racism as the major reason of maladaptation of Japanese war brides as presented in Velina Hasu Houston’s play Tea. Tea presents the narrative of five Japanese war brides, living in America for almost two decades, victims of racism and discrimination. The close analysis of this play also explores that war brides’ only way of survival in racist American society is adhering to their Japanese identity and formulating separate identity as a group from the larger society.
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