{"id":50418,"date":"2016-12-03T03:07:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T03:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50418"},"modified":"2016-12-03T22:54:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-03T22:54:49","slug":"a-young-playwrights-quest-to-ask-difficult-questions-about-race-class-and-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50418","title":{"rendered":"A young playwright’s quest to ask difficult questions about race, class and gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young playwright’s quest to ask difficult questions about race, class and gender<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times<\/a>
\n2016-12-02<\/p>\n

Margaret Gray<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leah Nanako Winkler\u2019s<\/a> new play \u201cKentucky<\/a>\u201d\u00a0is a comedy about a Japanese American woman raised in the South.\u00a0Like her protagonist Hiro, Winkler is half-Japanese and grew up in Kentucky<\/a>. Like Hiro, she left \u00a0for New York<\/a> and didn\u2019t return for years. And like Hiro, Winkler found her sister\u2019s embrace of evangelical Christianity puzzling and alarming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like she\u2019d joined a cult,\u201d\u00a0recalls Winkler, who clarifies that she wasn\u2019t entirely like the Hiro of her play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t actually try to stop my sister\u2019s wedding,\u201d\u00a0she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the dressing room at East West Players\u2019<\/a> theater in downtown L.A.<\/a>, where the West Coast premiere of \u201cKentucky\u201d runs through Dec. 11, Winkler says the new work is \u201ccircumstantially autobiographical.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Born in Japan<\/a>, Winkler spent some of her childhood there before moving to Kentucky. She won\u2019t say how old she was at the time. \u201cI don\u2019t like to answer that question because there\u2019s a lot of judgment placed on that,\u201d\u00a0she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a big difference if I say 2 or if I say 12. People like to peg you on how Japanese or how American you are, when you’re mixed race.\u201d<\/p>\n

She will say that she was old enough to experience \u201ca double identity crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Japan I was a child model because of my Western looks,\u201d\u00a0she says. \u201cI was considered gaijin<\/em><\/a>, which means foreigner. But in America I was the girl from Japan.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A young playwright’s quest to ask difficult questions about race, class and gender The Los Angeles Times 2016-12-02 Margaret Gray Leah Nanako Winkler\u2019s new play \u201cKentucky\u201d\u00a0is a comedy about a Japanese American woman raised in the South.\u00a0Like her protagonist Hiro, Winkler is half-Japanese and grew up in Kentucky. Like Hiro, she left \u00a0for New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,16,395,8,20],"tags":[495,25620,3909,25622,13272],"class_list":["post-50418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-kentucky","tag-leah-nanako-winkler","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-margaret-gray","tag-the-los-angeles-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50423,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50418\/revisions\/50423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}