Hwang’s Chinese
David Henry Hwang is the writerly equivalent of Charlie Chan’s Number One Son and Gunga Din (“Hwang’s Metamorphosis,” by Sylvie Drake, Oct. 30).
The China and Chinese America he writes of in “F.O.B.,” “Dance and the Railroad” and “M. Butterfly” are the products of a white racist imagination, not any encounter with the facts or the reality of the warriors whose names and lives he forces into the white racist stereotype of a Chinese culture.
He should not be surprised at the popularity of “M. Butterfly.” It’s Charlie Chan as the whites originally conceived him. The good Chinese man, the best Chinese man, the manliest Chinese man is an effeminate homosexual.
Hwang always wrote like a white about the Chinese, freely faking it to create racist effects. I, for one, am overjoyed that he at last is giving up playing Joe Papp’s Number One Son and writing about “just anybody.”
Please, David, now that you have declared yourself white, stay white, write white about whites and get out of town.
FRANK CHIN
Los Angeles
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