Misplaced Pages

This article contains promotional content. Please help improve it by removing promotional language and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic text written from a neutral point of view. (November 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Velina Hasu Houston (born Velina Avisa Hasu Houston on May 5, 1957) is an American writer. Primarily an internationally acclaimed playwright and librettist, she is also a published poet, screenwriter for film and television, and essayist.

Her work draws from her experience of being multiracial as well as from the immigrant experiences of her family, her multi-ethnicity, and intersection of culture, race, gender, and region.

Houston is best known for her play Tea, which portrays the lives of Japanese international brides, often known as war brides, who move to the United States with their U.S. American serviceman husbands who are of varied racial backgrounds. Tea had its professional premiere Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1987, and was designated by Roundabout Theatre as an American theatre canon classic. Since its premiere, the play continues to be produced globally. The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Institute referred to Tea as "one of the most widely produced Asian American plays worldwide."

Early life

Houston, the youngest of three, was born in international waters outside of Japan on a U.S. military ship. Her Japanese mother, Setsuko Takechi, was originally from Matsuyama, Ehime, a provincial town on Shikoku Island. Her father, Lemo Houston, was an African-American, Blackfoot-Pikuni Native American, Spanish, and Portuguese man originally from Linden, Alabama.

In 1946, the parents of Velina met each other in Kobe, initiating a nine-year courtship despite disapproval from Velina's maternal grandfather. The grandfather, devastated by his country's defeat in World War II and the loss of his family's land due to the land reform policies backed by the U.S. occupation, died by suicide. Following their marriage, the couple eventually had little contact with both sides of their respective families. The family settled in Junction City, Kansas, a small town adjacent to the military base, living a culturally Japanese lifestyle at the insistence of Velina's mother, Setsuko.

In 1969, as a result of combat-related stress and alcoholism, Velina's father died. Setsuko continued raising her family in Junction City. She died in 2022 at the age of 93.

Education

Houston attended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles and at the University of Southern California. She holds a PhD from USC's School of Cinematic Arts, and an MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles' School of Theater, Film, and Television. She also attended Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, majoring in journalism and theater with a minor in philosophy. She is a Phi Beta Kappa.

Houston serves as a Distinguished Professor of Theatre in Dramatic Writing at the USC School of Dramatic Arts and is USC's Resident Playwright. She is on the Board of Trustees of Berklee College in Boston.

Personal life

Houston has been married to Peter Henry Jones of Manchester, England, since 2002, and resides in Los Angeles, California. She has two children, Kiyoshi and Leilani.

Awards and fellowships

Houston has been recognized as a Japan Foundation Fellow, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, a Sidney F. Brody Fellow, a James Zumberge Fellow (thrice), a California Arts Council fellow, a Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation fellow; in addition, she was a co-recipient of a fellowship from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Her archives are held at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.

Works

• Anthologies
  • (ed.) The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Anthology of plays by Wakako Yamauchi, Genny Lim and Velina Hasu Houston.
  • (ed.) But still, like air, I'll rise: new Asian American plays. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. Anthology of plays by Jeannie Barroga, Philip Kan Gotanda, Velina Hasu Houston, Huynh Quang Nhuong, David Henry Hwang, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Sung Rno, Dmae Roberts, Lucy Wang, Elizabeth Wong and Chay Yew.
• Theatrical Works
  • Tea
  • Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has Broken)
  • American Dreams
  • Kokoro (True Heart)
  • Setting the Table
  • Calligraphy
  • Oh I Remember the Black Birch
  • Little Women (A Multicultural Transposition)
  • Cinnamon Girl (book and lyrics by Houston)
  • The Everywhere of Her (book and lyrics by Houston), and others.

References

1. "Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Book by Miles Xian Liu". Greenwood Press, 2002. Archived from the original on February 4, 2008. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
2. "Velina Hasu Houston | LATW". LA Theatre Works.
3. "Velina Hasu Houston | Writer, Producer, Additional Crew". IMDB.
4. Houston, Velina Hasu (1991). "The Past Meets the Future: A Cultural Essay". Amerasia Journal. 17: 53–56. doi:10.17953/amer.17.1.u263482493745313.
5. Velina Hasu Houston https://www.velinahasuhouston.com/. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
6. "Roundabout Theatre Announces 2023 Refocus Project Lineup". American Theatre. May 2023.
7. "The FPI Files: Hero Theatre's Revival of TEA". Los Angeles Female Playwrights Institute. April 20, 2022.
8. Obituary, Rafu Shimpo (July 26, 2022). "Setsuko Takechi Perry". Rafu Shimpo. Retrieved November 29, 2022.
9. "Official Velina Hasu Houston Website". Velina Hasu Houston. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
10. Houston, Velina Hasu (2017). The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-first Century. New York: 2Leaf Press.
11. Houston, Velina Hasu (2017). The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-first Century. New York: 2Leaf Press.
12. "Setsuko Takechi Perry". The Rafu Shimpo. July 26, 2022.
13. "USC Cinematic Arts | Home". cinema.usc.edu. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
14. "MFA Degree Description and Requirements". UC Berkeley Art Practice. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
15. Susan Lloyd Franzen, Behind the Facade of Fort Riley's Hometown: The Inside Story of Junction City, Kansas
16. "Velina Hasu Houston | Berklee". Berklee College.
17. "Velina Hasu Houston". USC School of Dramatic Arts.
18. "Board of Trustees". Berklee College.
19. Orr, John (March 9, 2017). "'Calligraphy' captures collision of East and West". East Bay Times.
20. Greenberg, Shoshana (September 18, 2018). "7 Women of Theatre History You Should Know: Part Five". The Interval.
21. "Velina Hasu Houston". University of Washington.
22. "2009 Awardees". Women in Theatre.
23. "Play Hopes For A Better World". The Daily Breeze. August 23, 2007.
24. "Awards – Honors". Velina Hasu Houston.
25. "New Year, New Beginnings, New Manuscript Collections". The Huntington.
26. "Creative Content". Velina Hasu Houston.

• 1957 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American women writers
• American women poets
• American dramatists and playwrights of Japanese descent
• American writers of Japanese descent
• American poets of Asian descent
• American women writers of Asian descent
• University of Southern California faculty
• People from Junction City, Kansas
• Writers from Tokyo
• American women dramatists and playwrights
• Writers from Kansas
• Writers from California
• 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American poets
• American women academics
• African-American poets
• 20th-century African-American women writers
• 20th-century African-American writers
• 21st-century African-American writers
• 21st-century African-American women