Celebrating this year’s Asian Heritage Month, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (HSSL) showcases a variety of stories by contemporary Canadian playwrights of Asian Heritage through the Redpath Book Display (also, browseable online).

Why read plays?

In “Why Plays Should be Seen—and Read,” Isaiah Stavchansky points out that reading a play, rather than watching a stage performance, enables us to have a more intimate interaction with the storyteller and to “partake in a shared experience of the text.”

Stavchansky, who edited and published a collection of American plays on the theme of immigration, also raises a practical question. Access to theatres is limited to people living in big cities. Given the underrepresentation of Asian Canadian theatre artists on stages,¹ opportunities to watch Asian Canadian drama performances are even more limited.

Unlike the cultural traditions imported and enjoyed by early immigrants, such as Cantonese operas popular in Victoria’s Chinatown blocks in the 1860s,² Asian Canadian plays today consist of “home-grown” stories that reflect Canada’s multiethnic and multicultural social fabric.

Some of the plays on display explore themes such as immigration, racism, stereotyping, identity, generational tensions, assimilation, and upward mobility.

Some plays depict the lives of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people around us, including but not limited to Asian Canadians.

In addition, some plays depict historical events and fictional stories set in Asia.

1. Chang, Eury Colin. “Unraveling the History of Asian Canadian Theatre“. UBC Public Scholars Initiative Blog. Retrieved 29 April 2026. ↩︎
2. Rao, Nancy Y. (2018). “Inside Chinese Theatre: Cantonese Opera in Canada”. Intersections. Vol. 38, No. 1-2, 2018, p. 81-104. https://doi.org/10.7202/1071675ar ↩︎

Welcome to the first installment of the recurring “New Books at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library” feature. Every few weeks, we will feature a list of new books (new to the library, not necessarily newly published) that have been selected by the liaison librarians at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. These New Books lists represent only a selection of books acquired by the library in recent months. All new books in print can be found on the main floor of the library, organized by subject area. This is a great collection to browse whether you’re looking for a volume of poetry or the latest deep dive into Big Tech, and everything in between. Come and visit us at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library and enjoy the vast and diverse collection of books selected just for you.