SOURCE: Lye, Colleen. “M. Butterfly and the Rhetoric of Antiessentialism: Minority Discourse in an International Frame.” In The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions, edited by David Palumbo-Liu, pp. 260-89. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
In the following essay, Lye examines the portrayals of gender, race, nationality, geopolitics, and power within M. Butterfly, and discusses the variety of critical interpretations the play has garnered.
