can Literature, edited by King-Kok Cheung. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Bunkong TuonHwang, Caroline (?– )
A Korean-American writer who currently lives in
New York and works as a magazine editor, Hwang
graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
and went on to get an M.F.A. from New York Uni-
versity. Her writings have appeared in Glamour,
Redbook, Self, Mademoiselle, Cosmogirl, YM, and
Newsweek.
In Hwang’s debut novel, In Full Bloom (2003),
Ginger Lee is a graduate school dropout who does
not mind living in New York City to work as her
best friend’s assistant at À la Mode fashion maga-
zine. Her life, however, is thrown into chaos when
her mother unexpectedly arrives with a mission
to get her daughter married. Conflicted with her
Korean-American identity, Ginger does not date
Korean-American men, a fact she is hesitant to
tell her mother. Thirteen years earlier, her mother
had cut off communication with George, Ginger’s
older brother, because he married a white woman
against her wishes. Ginger staves off her mother’s
aggressive attempts to set her up by keeping her-
self busy at work; she later decides, however, that
the best way to repel the blind dates is to sabotage
them. To her surprise, she is forced to address her
own identity issues when she goes on a blind date
with a “happily-adjusted second-generation Ko-
rean American” (209). Upon reflecting on their
conversation, she realizes she had been frustrated
about her “Korean and American halves, trying to
keep them in balance, when they all got mixed up
anyway” (259).
Hwang’s portrayal of Korean-American men
contributes to a growing body of literature that
portrays them in an unflattering light. Ginger’s
father turns out to be a liar about his past; her
brother George marries a white woman and is dis-
owned; the father of a potential suitor abuses his
wife and blames her for their son’s singleness; and
the same potential suitor refuses to date Ginger
while hiding his homosexuality. The novel sug-
gests that even if Korean-American women want
to date Korean-American men, few are suitable or
available.
Ginger’s status as a single female, on the other
hand, reflects a dilemma that many Korean-Amer-
ican women and their parents grapple with today.
Hwang portrays this issue in a fresh and comi-
cal light and suggests in the conclusion that per-
haps marriage is not everyone’s final destination.
Her protagonist realizes that “to be someone was
to want to be someone more, not someone else”
(252), or perhaps, not simply someone’s wife.
Sarah ParkHwang, David Henry (1957– )
A seminal Asian-American dramatist, Hwang is
best known for his multi-award-winning Broad-
way sensation, M. BUTTERFLY. Some of his other
plays have been very successful, while others have
not fared well commercially or critically. Hwang
has also collaborated with the acclaimed com-
poser, Philip Glass. The 1988 collaboration be-
tween Glass and Hwang, 1,000 Airplanes on the
Roof, is a science fiction musical that celebrates a
bizarre meeting between humans and aliens. Addi-
tionally, Hwang wrote the libretto for Glass’s 1992
opera, The Voyage, which uses the theme of space
travel to reflect upon the 15th-century achieve-
ments of Christopher Columbus. The work was
commissioned and premiered by the Metropoli-
tan Opera of New York. Recently, Hwang has also
written screenplays including one for the David
Cronenberg–directed film version of his own play,
M. Butterfly, and others for films such as Golden
Gate (1994) and Possession (2002).
In the substantial canon of his own dramatic
works, Hwang often centers on Chinese-Ameri-
can crises of identity, portraying sympathetically
the anxieties of Chinese Americans who do not
feel entirely American or entirely Chinese. Taken
together, Hwang’s plays articulate his often-stated
belief that it is limiting to be pigeon-holed as an
Asian American. Identity is fluid, Hwang insists:
Skin color or genetic origins should not limit
choices in life. Hwang’s plays also demonstrate his118 Hwang, Caroline