In many of his plays, Hwang suggests that reconciliation with and acceptance of family is necessary for individual identity; he portrays the destruction and chaos that ensues when a family lacks integrity and an adequate means of legitimate communication. He often employs surrealistic techniques and Asian ritual dance, which is sometimes rendered as ritualistic dialogue and gesture, to investigate a character's psychological dimension or motivation. Politically, Hwang asserts that race and gender are primarily social constructions, so he deconstructs Western gender, racial, and political stereotypes of Asians. He is critical of all forms of fundamentalism, especially Christian fundamentalism.
Hwang was born on 11 August 1957 in San Gabriel, California, a Los Angeles suburb, to Henry Yuan and Dorothy Yu Huang Hwang. In 1948 Hwang's father had emigrated from Shanghai via Taiwan to California and graduated with a degree in business from the University of Southern California, where he met Hwang's mother, who was studying piano. Dorothy Hwang, born in southern China but raised in the Philippines, had been sent to the University of Southern California in 1952 by her parents to complete her training as a classical pianist.
