Cultural Identity at the Liminal Spaces: A Study of Wakako Yamauchi’s And The Soul Shall Dance

In the contemporary world, one of the major forces of identity transformation is crossborder movements or transnational movements. One’s identity is no longer perceived as an innate construct based on ethnicity or nationality but rather as something unstable, which changes in accordance with the diverse cultural contexts and societal operations. Accordingly, we have today the concept of culture transcending the barriers of nation, and the concept of identity escaping strictures imposed by any nationality. Such transformation in the notion of culture and identity have transpired due to an ever-present phenomenon of migrating communities or diasporic communities. Wakako Yamauchi in her play,And the Soul Shall Dance, discusses this issue of the formation of cultural identity in the immigrant community of Japanese-Americans in the early 20th century. Falling between cultural integration, cultural assimilation and a longing for one’s own homeland, the identity of Japanese-Americans is constructed at the “in-between” spaces of two cultures. The play essentially brings forth the struggles formulated by the people belonging to two cultural backgrounds, Japanese and American, and trying to resolve their lives at the borderlands of culturality.