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In his monograph David Henry Hwang (1989) Douglas Street insists that Hwang is "clearly a writer of the American West," even though Hwang's West
is far removed from that traditionally brought to mind by the writings of Bret Harte or David Belasco. Hwang's West is that built with "coolie" labor in the mines and on the railroads from Omaha to Sacramento to San Francisco. His [Asian] Westerner was ignored or ridiculed by early white society and is misunderstood by many today. Yet [this character] has become a pivotal fixture in both the significant literature and the cultural re-examination of what has metamorphosed into the New American West.
Street believes, then, that regardless of the play in question--whether the mythologically introspective The Dance and the Railroad (1983), the farcical Family Devotions (1983), or the deconstructionist M. Butterfly (1988)--Hwang's concern is always with clearing spaces in the metaphysical American frontier for Asian American inhabitation, acceptance, and accomplishment.
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