Diana Son,a contemporary Asian American playwright,delves into the affective struggles of an Asian American woman and an African American man in 21st century American society in her play Satellites.The characters navigate the complexities of rebuilding an affective community amid the negative affect stemming from the broader American social and cultural milieu.The negative affect is not only the cause of the couple's community crisis but also functions an emotional glue for them to reconstruct their affective bond.The paper delves into the negative affect of the middle-class Asian American female protagonist's anxiety and the African American male protagonist's shame,examining their individual origins and depictions.It seeks to uncover the establishment of an interethnic affective community in contemporary America,ultimately concluding that negative affect serves as the emotional thread connecting different ethnicities,uniting them in a shared desire to reconstruct the affective community through emotional contagion and the dissolution of emotional estrangement.
negative affectemotional contagionaffective community