Reframing Failure through an Asian American Body in Aya Ogawa’s The Nosebleed

In their autobiographical play The Nosebleed, Aya Ogawa reveals how the concept of failure is racialized by neoliberal ideologies in the U.S. that bind people of color to the rhetoric of personal failure. This article argues that Ogawa theatricalizes how this racialized concept of failure can both symbolically and literally affect Asian American bodies through Ogawa’s own performing body, which embodies three generations of Japanese American diasporic experience (their father, themself, and their son). As examples, this article examines two moments of bodily transformation onstage: the nosebleed of Ogawa’s son and the cremation of their father’s remains. First, I argue that the nosebleed functions as a warning sign, which viscerally visualizes how “minor feelings” (Cathy Park Hong) accumulate in one’s body and erupt as a somatic symptom. Next, I turn my attention to shredded papers, which become the father’s cremated remains, to analyze how this symbol of failed communication is intricately entangled with the Ogawa family’s diasporic experience in the U.S.