March 2004 Performance 7 x 6.5 in, 184 pages Paperback 1-885030-38-X $14.95 list	Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara Performance works and commentary by Denise Uyehara Book Description . About the Author . Excerpt . Reviews . Events . Buy Books Now
	Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara presents the complete texts of "Big Head" and "Maps of City and Body," two of Uyehara's most acclaimed shows. In "Big Head," Uyehara questions the logic of political and personal rhetoric by exploring the relationship between Japanese American internment camps and post-September 11th racial violence. "Maps of City and Body" takes on subjects ranging from the trails left behind by childhood kisses to the reimagining of a grandmother's fiery suicide to explore how memories mark our bodies. In both works, Uyehara remains unflinchingly attentive to the transformative details that give our lives shape. This selection of Uyehara's performance pieces has been designed to function as both experience and documentation. It includes images from her performances, as well as detailed stage directions. It also includes detailed descriptions of Uyehara's other public art investigations, as well as a conversation with dancer/scholar Yutian Wong, a chronology of readings and stagings, and a bibliography. This is the first in a series of books by Kaya Press on Asian diasporic performance artists. Praise for Maps of City and Body: "Compelling... as graceful and agile on stage as she is on the page.... Uyehara is definitely one to watch." -- Los Angeles Times "Maps of City and Body is a gem: fierce, feminist, lyrical, witty. Uyehara's art represents a profound engagement with our contemporary world, tracing the impact of history, memory, and politics on individual lives." -- Dorinne Kondo, University of Southern California "From this marvelous collection of performance chronicles, scripts, and reflections, Denise Uyehara emerges as an artist with a keen sense of the connectedness of things. Attuned to the resonance of everyday life rituals and chance occurrences, she gently coaxes us to understand how 'big ideas' such as interculturalism and globalization are actually perceived in our most intimate spaces, and how history is experienced in our bodies and memories." -- Coco Fusco, Author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas "A wonderful collection by one of our favorite performers in the world. This is one of those books you don't just read, you inhabit. Don't leave home without it." -- Holly Hughes and David Rom‡n, Editors, O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance "Like a Beat poet in search of America, Denise Uyehara doesn't merely set out to be artful, she aims to set the record straight! An artist of conceptual integrity and executed brilliance, she aims for the loftier state called the body, with poetry and ritual her traveling companions. Her marriage of language to movement is both astonishing and skillful: she rarely lets us down, she lets us in." -- Luis Alfaro, Director, New Play Development, Mark Taper Forum Theatre