Understanding David Henry Hwang

by William C. Boles

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611172881
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	12/15/2013
Series:	Understanding Contemporary American Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	445 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William C. Boles is a professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and the author of The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall. He has published essays on Martin McDonagh, Wendy Wasserstein, Shelagh Delaney, and Samuel Beckett.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface ix

Chapter 1 Understanding David Henry Hwang 1

Chapter 2 Hwang's Asian American Trilogy: FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, and Family Devotions 13

Chapter 3 Two Experiments: Sound and Beauty and Rich Relations 36

Chapter 4 International Success: M. Butterfly 54

Chapter 5 After M. Butterfly: Controversy, Love, Failure, and Gold 67

Chapter 6 A Musical Hwang: Flower Drum Song 88

Chapter 7 Wrapping Up, Beginning Anew: Yellow Face and Chinglish 102

Notes 125

Bibliography 135

Index 141

What People are Saying About This

Stanton B. Garner

William C. Boles's Understanding David Henry Hwang is a carefully researched, engaging, and beautifully written overview of the playwright's career and works. Not only has Boles provided the most complete account we have of this important dramatist, he offers fascinating insights into American racial identity over the last thirty years.

Willard Manus

Understanding David Henry Hwang, by William C. Boles, not only provides details about Hwang's life but goes deeply into his play-writing process, showing how the theme of identity figures strongly in his work.

Editorial Reviews

"David Henry Hwang, by William C. Boles, not only provides details about Hwang's life but goes deeply into his play-writing process, showing how the theme of identity figures strongly in his work."— Willard Manus, Lively-Arts.com
"William C. Boles's Understanding David Henry Hwang is a carefully researched, engaging, and beautifully written overview of the playwright's career and works. Not only has Boles provided the most complete account we have of this important dramatist, he offers fascinating insights into American racial identity over the last thirty years."— Stanton B. Garner, Jr., Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Tennessee

From the Publisher