Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang
"Trying to Find Chinatown" by David Henry Hwang is a two-character play exploring the complexities of modern Chinese American identity through a dialogue between Benjamin, a Caucasian Asian American man, and Ronnie, a street musician of Asian descent. Set on a New York City corner, their interaction is marked by a clash of perspectives on ethnicity, self-representation, and cultural heritage. Benjamin, who was adopted into an Asian American family, seeks to connect with his roots in Chinatown after his father's passing, while Ronnie embraces a wide array of American musical traditions, revealing his own disconnection from his cultural background.
The play highlights how both characters are likable, yet their arguments expose different facets of identity and belonging. Benjamin's inquiries about his heritage confront Ronnie's lack of knowledge about Asian American history, leading to a deeper discussion about the meaning of being American amidst a cacophony of cultures. Ultimately, the play does not favor one viewpoint over the other; instead, it suggests that self-identity is shaped not just by physical appearance but also by cultural connections and personal experiences. Hwang's work emphasizes the coexistence of diverse identities in the broader tapestry of American culture, inviting audiences to reflect on their own understanding of ethnicity and heritage.
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Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First produced: 1996 (first published, 1996)
Type of work: Play (one-act)
The Work
Two perspectives on modern Chinese American identity clash on a New York City corner when Benjamin, a Caucasian Asian American, and Ronnie, a fully assimilated street musician of Asian ancestry, debate ethnic identity. The charm of this two-person play is that each character is equally likable (and at times equally annoying); their arguments, though oppositional, equally viable; and, in the end, no single viewpoint is privileged. Their debate about how best to represent oneself as an Asian American ends not in a victory but in a draw.
Benjamin Wong is blue eyed and blond haired. His midwestern drawl is the sound of a Kansas childhood, and his ethnic pride rants reflect his liberal education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he majored in Asian American studies. Benjamin’s last name and his ethnic identity are products of his adoption as an infant into an Asian American family. Benjamin’s visit to New York City, his first, is a pilgrimage to pay homage to his recently deceased father. He wants to visit his father’s birth house in Chinatown, but first he needs directions, which he hopes to wrestle from Ronnie, who, Asian in appearance, looks like he might know.
Ronnie is a violinist of credible ability whose range covers classical to jazz, but not the country-western that is music to Benjamin’s ears. When Benjamin mistakenly identifies Ronnie’s instrument as a fiddle, tempers flare. Ronnie’s hurled invective “hick” is misplaced, however, as Benjamin points out, “you can’t judge my race by my genetic heritage alone.” Asian in skin tone and facial features, Ronnie knows little about the history of his culture, and it is a lesson in injustices that his paler counterpart inflicts upon him, brutal incident after brutal incident. If Ronnie is surprised that Benjamin knows so much about Asian American history, then Benjamin is equally shocked that Ronnie knows so little.
Ronnie has embraced a different heritage and in a stirring soliloquy gives an impromptu lesson on the history of American music, his words accompanied by background strings that evoke the very styles he names. He traces his musical roots to the American slave era, acknowledging the fiddle as the instrument of choice for oppressed slaves who would develop the blues out of their sufferings. Ronnie praises rockabilly and jazz, both traditional American musical genres, before imaginatively crossing the Atlantic to Europe, musical motherland to many Americans, including, ironically, Benjamin. Here Ronnie lauds the classical and folk traditions of those countries whose citizens immigrated to the United States and influenced generations of new musicians. In a directional note, the playwright suggests that the music begins to assume a somewhat Asian tone toward the end of Ronnie’s monologue. The violinist offers a musical pastiche that suggests a new metaphor for American culture, a cacophony of harmonious sounds, and a reminder as well of diverse contributions to an American identity. Ronnie suggests that to be American is to be all ethnicities at once.
Had Hwang ended his play at this point, the victor would be Ronnie, but one more monologue follows—Benjamin’s. His pulpit is the stoop outside his father’s birthplace, 13 Doyers Street. Overwhelmed with emotion, Benjamin revels in the various dialects that he hears spoken on the street (Cantonese, Sze-Yup, and Hokkien), which mimic in language the multiple musical sounds praised and played by Ronnie. The diverse human voices allow him to imagine scenes and sights and scents from his father’s childhood. Along with positive images of culinary delights, Benjamin recounts the struggles of his grandfather to provide a better life for his son in America and his father’s vow never to return to this ghetto. He did not, but his adopted Caucasian Asian American son does. Benjamin’s final statement is one of sympathy for people (such as Ronnie, it is implied) who do not “know who they truly are.”
Hwang intimates that neither Benjamin nor Ronnie’s viewpoint on ethnicity is wholly in error or entirely correct, but their coexistence seems important. In Trying to Find Chinatown, self-identity appears less a matter of skin tone than of culture, of language, of family connectedness.
Bibliography
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