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David Henry Hwang: Honesty and Identity

David Henry Hwang is the author of several award-winning plays, from 1980's FOB (or "Fresh Off the Boat") to M. Butterfly.

For our series Scenes I Wish I'd Written, Hwang discusses an exchange from Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. The play -- subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes -- mesmerized audiences on Broadway in the early 1990s, and later on HBO.

The Los Angeles-born Hwang, who won a Tony for his 1988 M. Butterfly, says Tony Kushner's Angels in America stunned him. "It's funny, political, humanistic," Hwang tells NPR's Susan Stamberg. "I was knocked out by it."

Asked to choose a landmark scene from his own work, Hwang refers to his Golden Child. First performed in 1996, Hwang says the piece sprang from his own family's early experiences in the United States.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.