Momoko Iko

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Momoko Iko (1940–2020) was a Japanese-American playwright, best known for her 1972 play Gold Watch.[1]

Life[]

Momoko Iko was born to Kyokuo and Natsuko (Kagawa) Iko on March 30, 1940 in Wapato, Washington.[2] She was the youngest of six children.[3] After the start of World War II, Iko was interned, aged two, at Heart Mountain Relocation Center.[4] Her family were the last to leave the camp in 1945, as they did not know where to go.[3] The family initially worked as migrant farm workers in Wyoming before settling in Chicago.[2]

Iko studied at Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating with a BA in English in 1961. She also studied at the Instituto Allende in Mexico and started a MFA at the University of Iowa, where she met the writer Nelson Algren.[2]

After seeing Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, Iko turned an unpublished novel into her first play, Gold Watch.[2] First produced by Inner City Cultural Center in Los Angeles in 1972, Gold Watch is thought to be the first play written by an Asian American woman produced in the continental United States.[1] The play had several productions and was shown on television on PBS in 1975.[2] She was a founding member of the in Chicago.[3]

Iko moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. There she was a founder member of (PAAWWW). She died at her Los Angeles home on July 19, 2020.[3]

Works[]

  • Gold Watch, 1970. Produced at the Inner City Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 1972. Excerpted in Frank Chin et al. (ed.) Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, 1974. Published in Roberta Uno (ed.) Unbroken thread: an anthology of plays by Asian American women. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.
  • When We Were Young, 1973.
  • Flowers and Household Gods, 1975.
  • Hollywood Mirrors, 1978.
  • Boutique living and disposable icons: a family comedy in two acts, 1987. Produced at the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, Perry Street Theatre (New York, N.Y.), June 24, 1988.

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Guiyou Huang (2006). The Columbia Guide to Asian American Literature Since 1945. Columbia University Press. pp. 96–7. ISBN 978-0-231-50103-3.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Louis J. Parascandola (2002). "Momoko Iko (1940–)". In Miles Xian Liu (ed.). Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 145–9. ISBN 978-0-313-31455-1.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Obituary: Playwright Momoko Iko, Author of 'Gold Watch'". Rafu Shimpo. 20 August 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
  4. ^ "Momoko Iko (born 1940)". The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States.
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