Social Integration: A Cultural Study in Philip Kan Gotanda’s play The Wash

Abstract

Social integration is the process of integrating minorities into the dominant society. It is a changing process in which all individuals have to engage in negotiation to create and maintain peaceful social ties. To comprehend the social integration process more fully, the Fourfold Model of Acculturation of minorities’ experiences in the dominant society will be employed. Philip Kan Gotanda is among the Japanese American playwrights whose plays, men and women, fight over how Asian Americans should struggle to be a part of American society from different viewpoints. The study aims to explore the social integration of the second generation of Japanese Americans in the United States. In this study, social integration of Japanese Americans from the second generation as themes has been examined through the play The Wash by Philip Kan Gotanda. The study traces Nobu’s attempts to come to terms with his cultural maintenance and the need to adopt the cultural norms of American society. The study concludes that Nobu’s acculturation process is affected by racial discrimination in American society and his desire to keep his Japanese cultural heritage.