As Asian-Americans, the charge that is often lobbed against us is sort of the least original: the idea that somehow we're perpetual foreigners, that we can't be trusted, and that even my father, who was patriotic to the point that it was kind of a joke among his children, would be accused of being disloyal to America.
Interpretation
The quote addresses the stereotype of Asian-Americans as perpetual foreigners, highlighting issues of trust and loyalty in their identity.
David Henry Hwang's quote speaks to the experience of Asian-Americans confronting the stereotype of being viewed as outsiders, regardless of their loyalty or contributions to society. He reflects on the painful irony of his father, a deeply patriotic man, being perceived as disloyal simply due to his ethnicity, showcasing the harmful effects of racial assumptions and the struggle for acceptance within a nation that often fails to recognize their belonging.
In practice
In a speech addressing diversity, one might use this quote to highlight the challenges faced by Asian-Americans in seeking recognition.
There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.
My first plays were amazingly bad, but I had a teacher who thought I had promise, and he kept working with me. I finally went to a summer workshop before my senior year with people like Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes who encouraged me to write from my subconscious, and suddenly all this material about culture clash came out.
You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.
My work has always been controversial within certain segments of the Asian-American community. This is a community that is generally not represented well at all on the stage, in the media, etc. So on those few occasions when something comes along, everybody feels obligated to make sure that it represents his own point of view.
This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.
My relationship with cats has saved me from a deadly and pervasive ignorance.
There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
Connubial Because with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.
I read everything, but particularly, growing up in a household where my mom was black and my dad was white, I remember really loving 'Ebony' and 'Essence.' Those magazines were the only place where I could see images of women who looked like me or my mom.
Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.
Twas something else. I had come to hate her, you see. I had come to wish her dead, and that was what held me back.
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