I wrote a play in 1988 about my mother. Although my father is talked about a great deal in Mother Tongue, he never actually appears in the play because I always thought he deserves a play of his own and that, one day, I would give him his due. I still want to, but every…
Although I emigrated to the United States in 1968, my mother did not come to visit me in Kansas until August of 1976, after she had already been in America for four months. The reason why she decided to make the long journey from the Philippines was because my play Conpersonas was being performed in…
In the bad old days, where racism is concerned, even though they frequently wore white hoods to cover up their faces, we knew exactly who our enemies were. In public, they were unafraid to call us “Nigger” and all its equivalents–“Chink,” “Jap,” “Gook,” “Flip,” “Spic,” “Wop,” “Kike,” “Polack,” ad nauseam. Then came the Age of Political…