Grief and Terror in Post-9/11 Plays by South Asian and Arab American Playwrights

Abstract

Military conflicts such as the 1991 Gulf War fueled a significant number of racist and xenopho-bic incidents targeting South Asian, Muslim, and Arab Americans. But the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center Towers and other symbolic sites of power saw a marked increase in hate crimes, violence, and racial harassment. This was accompanied by the enactment of federal policies that justified the racial profiling of communities such as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the Muslim Ban. The U.S. Government implemented its “War on Terror” through systematic surveillance, exclusion, harassment, and deportation that disproportionately affected Arabs, South Asians, and Muslims in America and fueled a larger atmosphere of suspicion and fear that led to pervasive acts of racism. This chapter examines some plays by Asian Americans and Arab Americans dealing with the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Rehana Mirza’s Barriers, Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat, and Wajahat Ali’s The Domestic Crusaders . It then turns to a more detailed analysis of two works by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, whose complex representations call into question American attitudes towards Islam while still employing representational tropes relating to Muslims that U.S.-based audiences find familiar.