The Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison supports and shares the concerns expressed by the Madison Asian American community about the staging of the musical Miss Saigon in Madison in April, 2019. We critique Miss Saigon in terms of gender and sexuality, as well as race and ethnicity, for its stereotyped and offensive portrayals of all Vietnamese women as prostitutes, all Vietnamese men as villains, and white American men as the saviors of the self-sacrificing title character. We join the call for theater productions in Madison, both on campus and in the community, which are written and produced by Asian Americans and which center Asian American perspectives.
Read more about “What’s Wrong with Miss Saigon” from Professor Timothy Yu here.
