Abstract:

Lloyd Suh’s play for young audiences, Bina’s Six Apples, provides a foundation for a formulation of Korean American refugeetude. The refugee status of Koreans before and during the Korean War was a particularly ill-defined one; from a U.S. perspective, it was a label but not a legal status, and the consequent erasure of this particular aspect of militarism has had lasting effects on the U.S. imaginary. The 2022 premiere stages the Korean refugee experience onstage with attention to the dignity and creativity of the persons involved and without the explicit presence of the state. Bina’s Six Apples revises Cold War narratives, particularly countering the role of the Korean child or adoptee in narratives of U.S. saviorship and humanitarianism, and suggesting in keeping with contemporary concerns that we consider the child as an independent refugee and political actor. Furthermore, it suggests a means by which Korean (American) refugeetude is constructed transgenerationally. Feminist refugee epistemology importantly refocuses us on the creativity and storytelling that Bina hears and performs, a reflexive commentary on Suh’s work of historical reparation.

摘要：

劳埃德·苏（Lloyd Suh）为年轻观众创作的戏剧《比娜的六个苹果》为韩裔美国难民的制定奠定了基础。朝鲜战争之前和战争期间朝鲜人的难民地位尤其不明确。从美国的角度来看，它是一个标签，而不是一种法律地位，而军国主义这一特定方面随之而来的消除对美国的想象产生了持久的影响。2022 年首映式将韩国难民的经历搬上舞台，注重参与者的尊严和创造力，并且没有国家的明确参与。比娜的《六个苹果》修改了冷战叙事，特别是反驳了韩国儿童或被收养者在美国救世主和人道主义叙事中的角色，并建议我们将儿童视为独立的难民和政治行为者，以符合当代的担忧。此外，它还提出了韩（美）难民跨代构建的方法。重要的是，女权主义难民认识论使我们重新关注比娜听到和表演的创造力和讲故事，这是对苏历史修复工作的反思性评论。