Hilarious: It seems that the actress Tonya Pinkins dropped out of a New York production of the classic Mother Courage because, as she puts it, her “perspective as a Black woman was dismissed in favor of portraying the Black woman, through the filter of the White gaze”. The production, which has a white director, had been reset to the Congo in contemporary times. I don’t know much about the production, or about the Congo for that matter. But from an Asian perspective, I find it funny that Pinkins thinks that because she’s female and black, she has special insight into the feelings of a Congolese woman trapped in a brutal war. Is there some Black gene that makes all black women worldwide think and feel the same way? I wonder if the fictional woman would even think of herself as “black” given that virtually the entire population of her country is the same; surely she would find her identity elsewhere. Continue reading →