Somehow, the experience of doing #UnforgettableGirlShow at #EdFringe2023 has been the gift that keeps on giving. Case in point, this review from The Real Chrissparkle is giving us the opportunity to have important conversations I want to be having about this show. Here is my honest, playful challenge to some of the ideas and perspectives implicit in this review.

Your review talks about me being subject to “Asian Othering” and never being on the right side of “white”. Yes, this show was created to challenge and question the use of apostrophes to discredit the real experiences of people of color because it is dissonant with your white experience.

The interlude of the piece is my bouffon performance, my mockery of whiteness and all its stereotypes. This part of the show challenges people to laugh at white stereotypes with the same comfort with which they might have laughed at the East Asian stereotypes in the first part of the show. It challenges people to first-hand and in real-time reflect on their own experience of white privilege. Your reading of it as (‘a side reflection by an Asian woman who identifies as white and pities/ridicules anyone not like her’) is exhibit B of the limitedness of the imagination with which we view the work and performances of people of color. 

Also, the show is not an expose or a deep-dive into human trafficking—you do not need to be buying and selling humans to be complicit with the systemic oppressiveness of white supremacy that our culture is built on. The mail order bride is a metaphor for the problem of this society— that you think it’s normal to point at a face in a catalogue, and have a woman arrive at your doorstep. Because we do not consider some people, particularly women, people of color and people of Otherized identities, to be human beings. We consider them as psychologically unreal, as objects, as trash (hence, trash theatre). So the next time you meet those two men, there’s a conversation starter for you. 

I’m glad to hear that the piece was excruciatingly painful to watch. I invite you, and any other audience we have this Fringe, to think about whether this pain is because the piece is shaming you, or because you feel shame at your perspective, your actions and your complicity. One of the ways in which whiteness retains its power is through its invisibility—and by attributing this sort of pain to the unreasonable behavior of people of color and their allies, as opposed to your own feelings of shame about the problematic aspects of whiteness.

Thank you for your review, and you’re welcome for A Very Good Thing.

From the wrong side of “white”

Elisabeth Gunawan & The Unforgettable Girl Team