Understanding David Henry Hwang

William C. Boles

Description

David Henry Hwang is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won a 1988 Tony Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he has written the Obie Award-winners Golden Child and FOB, as well as Family Devotions, Sound and Beauty, Rich Relations, and a revised version of Flower Drum Song. His Yellow Face won a 2008 Obie Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Understanding David Henry Hwang is a critical study of Hwang's playwriting process as well as the role of identity in each one of Hwang's major theatrical works. A first-generation Asian American, Hwang intrinsically understands the complications surrounding the competing attractiveness of an American identity with its freedoms in contrast to the importance of a cultural and ethnic identity connected to another country's culture.

William C. Boles examines Hwang's plays by exploring the perplexing struggles surrounding Asian and Asian American stereotypes, values, and identity. Boles argues that Hwang deliberately uses stereotypes in order to subvert them, while at other times he embraces the dual complexity of ethnicity when it is tied to national identity and ethnic history. In addition to the individual questions of identity as they pertain to ethnicity, Boles discusses how Hwang's plays explore identity issues of gender, religion, profession, and sexuality. The volume concludes with a treatment of Chinglish, both in the context of rising Chinese economic prominence and in the context of Hwang's previous work.

Hwang has written ten short plays including The Dance and the Railroad, five screenplays, and many librettos for musical theater. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, Hwang was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Mr.
• Superiority (short story)
• Rich Relations
• C. Y. Lee (author)
• The Realist
• Flattery
• Well-made play
• John Lahr
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
• Athol Fugard
• David Henry Hwang
• Affirmative action
• Political correctness
• Shi Pei Pu
• Discrimination positive aux États-Unis
• Amy Tan
• Drama
• John Lithgow
• MR
• Lafcadio Hearn
• David Cronenberg
• Tom Stoppard

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172881
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING DAVID HENRY HWANG
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on
Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster
Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme | The Beats
Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly | T. C. Boyle
Raymond Carver | Fred Chappell | Chicano Literature
Contemporary American Drama | Contemporary American Horror Fiction
Contemporary American Literary Theory
Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926–1970
Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970–2000
Contemporary Chicana Literature | Robert Coover | Philip K. Dick
James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | John Gardner | George Garrett
Tim Gautreaux | John Hawkes | Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley
James Leo Herlihy | David Henry Hwang | John Irving | Randall Jarrell
Charles Johnson | Diane Johnson | Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy
Jack Kerouac | Jamaica Kincaid | Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner
Ursula K. Le Guin | Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet
Bobbie Ann Mason | Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle
Carson McCullers | W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Lorrie Moore
Toni Morrison’s Fiction | Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor | Joyce Carol Oates
Tim O’Brien | Flannery O’Connor | Cynthia Ozick | Suzan-Lori Parks
Walker Percy | Katherine Anne Porter | Richard Powers | Reynolds Price
Annie Proulx | Thomas Pynchon | Theodore Roethke | Philip Roth | May Sarton
Hubert Selby, Jr. | Mary Lee Settle | Sam Shepard | Neil Simon
Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder | William Stafford
Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor | Kurt Vonnegut
David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch | Eudora Welty
Edmund White | Tennessee Williams | August Wilson | Charles Wright
UNDERSTANDING
DAVID HENRY HWANG
William C. Boles
© 2013 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boles, William C., 1966–
Understanding David Henry Hwang / William C. Boles.
pages cm. (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-287-4 (hardbound : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61117-288-1 (ebook) 1. Hwang, David Henry, 1957–
Criticism and interpretation. i. Title.
PS3558.W83Z55 2013
812′.54 dc23
2013013544
For my dad, J. W. “Bill” Boles (1935–2013)
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface
Chapter 1 Understanding David Henry Hwang
Chapter 2 Hwang’s Asian American Trilogy: FOB, The Danc e and the Railroad , and Family Devotions
Chapter 3 Two Experiments: Sound and Beauty and Rich Relations
Chapter 4 International Success: M. Butterfly
Chapter 5 After M. Butterfly: Controversy, Love, Failure, and Gold
Chapter 6 A Musical Hwang: Flower Drum Song
Chapter 7 Wrapping Up, Beginning Anew: Yellow Face and Chinglish
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931–2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, “the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed.” Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli’s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
CHAPTER 1

Understanding David Henry Hwang
Sitting across from me in my American Drama class was David Henry Hwang. Surrounding us were students who had studied his play M. Butterfly the previous two class sessions and were ready to hear the real meaning of the play from the author instead of the interpretations of their teacher and fellow classmates. Hwang, though, like his play, surprised the students by asking each one to tell him what he or she found problematic in his Tony-Award–winning work. In other words, he wanted college students to tell him, a playwright for more than thirty years, what was wrong with his work, and in doing so he changed the discourse of the classroom from students listening to an expert to critics sharing their thoughts with a writer. In one subtle move he informed the students that their opinions and voices mattered to him. His opening question triggered a conversation that covered a wide range of topics, including whether the play was a love story, how each one of us inhabits multiple faces throughout our lives, and the changing nature of East/West relations, all with M. Butterfly as a background, but, equally, each student’s life and experiences also became part of the discussion. After Hwang’s visit to our class one student confided in me that it was one the most incredible experiences he had had in college.
The same level of excitement existed for all the students with whom he came in touch when he visited Rollins College in February 2010, as he led workshop sessions with new playwriting students, examining their work with a professionally keen eye as well as with great compassion; conducted a writing workshop with a group of students; and amiably made himself available to students with questions, comments, and advice. In the latter case his visit was an epiphany for an Asian American student, who shyly asked me if she could just have ten minutes to talk to Hwang, to which he gladly agreed. I later came to learn that she, like Hwang, was born to immigrant parents from Asia and wanted to write about her experience of bridging the American way of life with her parents’ protective Cambodian perspective. The words of encouragement and advice he gave her provided her with the confidence to write a full-length screenplay about a first-generation girl with strict Cambodian parents. Her story is just one of many that came up during his three-day visit to our campus. As for me, watching his amiable interaction with our students, coteaching the playwriting workshop with him, chatting about the casting difficulties for his new play, Chinglish , and discussing the merits of the varying flavors of crunchy Cheetos inspired me to write this book so that I could understand more about the playwright who had such a profound experience on my students as well as on contemporary American drama.
David Henry Hwang is a first-generation Chinese American, having been born in California on August 11, 1957, to his two immigrant parents. His father, Henry Hwang, the second son of his family, was born to a Chinese peasant who had relocated from the Chinese countryside to Shanghai, where he became wealthy and where Henry was born. Feeling confined by the limitations placed upon him as the family’s second son, Henry immigrated to Oregon in the late 1940s in order to study business at Linfield College before eventually transferring to the University of Southern California. His decision to leave China should not have come as a surprise to his family and friends. According to Hwang, his father “never much liked China, or the whole idea behind China or Chinese ways of thinking. He’s always been much more attracted to American ways of thinking. He feels Americans are more open they tell you what they think and he’s very much that way himself.” 1 Henry’s attraction to America in part grew out of the American movies he watched growing up. Hwang would incorporate his father’s love of classic American movies and its stars to comedic as well as dramatic effect in Yellow Face .
His mother, Dorothy Huang, also had a Chinese background. Her grandparents had lived in Amoy but moved to the Philippines, where they became successful merchants. Her family members were devout Protestant fundamentalists, and the religious faith of his mother’s side of the family would significantly influence his two plays Family Devotions and Golden Child . Following in the footsteps of her brother, who had come to the United States to go to college, Dorothy immigrated in 1952 in order to study concert piano at the University of Southern California. Dorothy met Henry at a unive