Wakako Yamauchi

Wakako Yamauchi
Born	1924 Westmorland, California
Nationality	USA
Genre	drama
Notable works	And the Soul Shall Dance The Music Lessons
Notable awards	Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award (1977)

Wakako Yamauchi (born 1924) is an Issei Japanese American writer. Her plays are considered pioneering works in Asian-American theater.

Yamauchi (née Nakamura) was born in Westmorland, California. Her mother and father, both Issei, or first-generation Japanese immigrants, were farmers in California's Imperial Valley. Many of her stories and her two plays, And the Soul Shall Dance and The Music Lessons, are set in the same dusty, isolated settings". Her plays and stories examine the hardships that Japanese Americans faced in California's agricultural communities and in the internment camps during the second World War. In 1942, at seventeen, Yamauchi and her family were interned at the Poston, Arizona camp; the title of her play 12-1-A refers to the family's address in the War Relocation Authority camp. While there, she worked on the camp newspaper, the Poston Chronicle, alongside fellow writer Hisaye Yamamoto (with whom Yamauchi would maintain a lifelong friendship).

After a year and a half in Poston, Yamauchi resettled outside camp, first in Utah and then in Chicago, where she began to take in interest in theater. In 1948, she married Chester Yamauchi, with whom she had one child before the couple divorced. She returned to the Los Angeles area, where she studied painting and continued to write. Her first published story, And the Soul Shall Dance, appeared in Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. Encouraged by East West Players director Mako, she soon after adapted the story into a play. The stage version of And the Soul Shall Dance was first performed at the East West Players in Los Angeles in 1974, and won the 1977 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for best new play. It was later produced for public television.

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