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.
Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn't enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was - the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips - seemed to always prevail and attract Dad's disdain.
Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister.
I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it's necessary.
I will only add, God bless you.
I want to meet a woman that will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who will make my jaw drop in awe. A woman that has little time for me. One who does not throw herself at me. One who respects herself who has a sense of herself. Where is she
Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world
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