SOURCE: Hwang, David Henry, and Bonnie Lyons. “‘Making His Muscles Work for Himself’: An Interview with David Henry Hwang.” Literary Review 42, no. 2 (winter 1999): 230-44.

In the following interview, which took place on September 7, 1996, Hwang muses on his early rise to fame, details the elements of playwriting that he focuses on, provides his view on Asian Americans in the arts, and discusses how he has matured personally and artistically since the beginning of his career.

Raised in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb by a first generation, Chinese American fundamentalist Christian family, David Henry Hwang wrote and directed his first play, F.O.B. (slang for “fresh off the boat”), which explores the tensions within and between recent and assimilated Chinese immigrants. F.O.B. won an Obie when it moved to New York in 1980 and since then many of Hwang's plays, including The Dance of the Railroad (1981), Family Devotions...