Negotiating Asian-Americans' Image

The book negotiates, dissects, and reconstructs the image of the Asian-Americans, particularly the Chinese and the Japanese, in the Western consciousness. These races are often viewed in the image of the threatening, enigmatic, backward, and yellow-skinned cunning people. The book dissects not only how these negative stereotypical images are fundamentally based on Western premises, but also it attempts to reveal their untruthfulness and deceptiveness. It tackles and compares some selected plays by two Asian-American playwrights: David Henry Hwang, a Chinese-American dramatist, and Philip Kan Gotanda, a Japanese-American playwright, in the light of certain critical, cultural notions.