Reviewed by:

• Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints by Ana Elena Puga and Víctor M. Espinosa
• Debra A. Castillo

This collaboration between a sociologist and a theatre scholar begins with a classic social science move: a melodramatic anecdote drawn from fieldwork in a migrant shelter, one that takes a surprising turn into a deep questioning of ethical dilemmas, both in the researcher and in the two migrant women of the anecdote. For the latter, these dilemmas derive from the context of life-and-death decisions that they are forced to make about how to perform their identities when kidnapped, where the wrong choice could cost them very dearly indeed, and then how to reframe this performance for an audience of activists, journalists, or scholars like the authors of this book. This powerful story allows the authors to frame their book in a way that asks hard questions of performance studies scholars and activist readers alike, along with anyone else who has been involved in the discussion and circulation of cultural production about migrant sufferings. “Can there be such a thing as strategic, efficacious melodrama?” they ask, or do we inevitably fall back into “fantasies of egalitarian participation”? (1).

The book is divided into three parts: “Rescuers,” “Mothers and Fathers,” and “Children and Youth,” each with two chapters. These include analyses of a wide range of writings by migrant advocates, journalism about migrants, documentary and fiction film, television, live protests, and the discussion of a few scripted plays, all focusing on material created between the mid 1980s to 2018. The larger context of this study is an interdisciplinary interweaving of social science, history, and humanities and arts research. As Puga and Espinosa argue, convincingly, “a certain amount of ethnographic research was necessary to better understand how people ‘stage’ migrants in daily life and how migrants perform themselves” (28). Thus, the social science fieldwork opens up the question of performance, history provides the ballast, and the focus in the individual chapters is much broader than study of traditional theatrical melodramas about Latin American migration to the USA. This [End Page 251] is a deeply researched book that wears its learning lightly. Reading it, I was reminded strongly of Hannah Arendt (whose Origins of Totalitarianism they cite) and the rigorous and scathing thinking in her article, “We Refugees”: “the less we are free to decide who we are or to live as we like, the more we try to put up a front, to hide the facts, and to play roles.”

The readers of this journal who are interested in theatrical productions and in new plays on the migrant experience will want to turn to the superb discussions of Javier Malpica’s 2005 play, Papá está en la Atlántida and the 2003 dance theater piece, Nine Digits. However, the more important question that Puga and Espinosa ask us to consider is that of how reading this historical moment through the theoretical and methodological lens of melodramatic performance can help us come to a deeper and more empathic understanding of the suffering of the very real migrants all around us right now in our communities.

审核人：

• Ana Elena Puga 和 Víctor M. Espinosa表演拉丁美洲移民中的苦难：英雄、烈士和圣人
• 黛布拉 A.卡斯蒂略

社会学家和戏剧学者之间的这种合作始于一项经典的社会科学举措：从移民收容所的田野工作中汲取的戏剧性轶事，令人惊讶地转变为对研究人员和两者的道德困境的深刻质疑移民妇女的轶事。对于后者，这些困境源于他们被迫做出关于在被绑架时如何表现自己的身份的生死决定的背景，错误的选择可能会让他们付出非常昂贵的代价，然后如何重新构建这种表现适合本书作者这样的活动家、记者或学者的听众。这个强大的故事使作者能够以一种向表演研究学者和激进读者提出尖锐问题的方式来构建他们的书，以及任何参与有关移民苦难的文化产品的讨论和传播的人。“会有战略性的、有效的情节剧这样的东西吗？” 他们问，还是我们不可避免地会陷入“平等参与的幻想”？(1).

全书分为“救援者”、“父母亲”、“儿童与青年”三部分，每部分两章。其中包括对移民倡导者的广泛著作的分析、关于移民的新闻、纪录片和小说电影、电视、现场抗议以及对一些剧本剧本的讨论，所有这些都集中在 1980 年代中期至 2018 年期间创作的材料上。这项研究的背景是社会科学、历史、人文和艺术研究的跨学科交织。正如 Puga 和 Espinosa 令人信服地争论的那样，“一定数量的人种学研究对于更好地了解人们如何在日常生活中‘表演’移民以及移民如何表现自己”（28）。因此，社会科学领域的工作开辟了表演的问题，历史提供了压舱物，各个章节的重点比研究关于拉丁美洲移民到美国的传统戏剧情节剧要广泛得多。这[End Page 251]是一本深入研究的书，它的学习轻松自如。读这本书，我强烈地想起了汉娜·阿伦特（他们引用了她的极权主义起源）以及她在“我们难民”一文中严谨而严厉的思想：“我们越不能自由地决定自己是谁或按照自己喜欢的方式生活，我们越是想摆架子，掩饰事实，扮演角色。”

本期刊的读者如果对戏剧作品和有关移民经历的新剧感兴趣，将希望转向哈维尔·马尔皮卡 2005 年的戏剧《大西洋之父》和 2003 年舞蹈戏剧作品《九位数》的精彩讨论。然而，普加和埃斯皮诺萨让我们考虑的更重要的问题是，如何通过情节剧表演的理论和方法论视角来解读这一历史时刻，可以帮助我们对非常真实的移民的苦难有更深入、更深切的理解。现在在我们周围的社区中。