David Henry Hwang

Deborah Ross (Hawaii Pacific University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

Born 11 Aug 1957
Activity 1980-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Chinese American

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Hwang's Works

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David Henry Hwang (1957-) is an American playwright whose best work uses theater to explore the formation of identity. In his earliest plays, this mainly meant racial or ethnic identity, as any writer with an Asian appearance and name emerging in the 1970s atmosphere of “identity politics” (Hwang and the Asian Society) would be seen as “hyphenated” (Gerard). An active proponent of Asian-American theater and a public voice against discrimination, he has sought various ways to turn ethnicity from a limitation to a gateway to the larger human problems of knowing oneself and relating to the world. His plays, while political, ask more questions than the ideology of a given moment can answer. Hwang’s Tony-award winning play

M. Butterfly

, his best known and perhaps most enduring work,…

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2944 words

Citation: Ross, Deborah. "David Henry Hwang". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 August 2011; last revised 24 July 2015. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12968, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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