Stereotypes In M. Butterfly, By David Henry Hwang

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

The novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee talks about the childhood of the protagonist Jean Louis Finch (Scout) as she grows up in the fictional county of Maycomb in Alabama. Soon after, Scout’s father, Atticus, gets a case of a black man falsely accused of rape, as Scout and her brother, Jem, bear witness to the case as they finally come to realize the prejudice and stereotyping in their own county. Stereotypes are destructive and prevent or discourage individual growth because it can cause violence and harm, it can create barriers within a society and it can change one’s views about something.

The issue of cultural stereotypes and misconceptions thematically runs throughout David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly. The play is inspired by a 1986 newspaper story about a former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer, who turns out to be a spy and a man. Hwang used the newspaper story and deconstructed it into Madame Butterfly to help breakdown the stereotypes that are present between the East and the West. Hwang’s play overall breaks down the sexist and racist clichés that the East-West have against each other that reaffirm the Western male culture ideas. The stereotypes presented in the play revolve around the two main characters, Gallimard and Song. The play itself begins in the present with Gallimard, a French diplomat who has

As the great Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” The book In the Time of the Butterflies is about a family of four girls who are living in the Dominican Republic under a very dangerous dictator. They rebel against him and the government to join a revolution along with many other people from the Dominican. In In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez uses the characterization of Patria to demonstrate the danger of passive religious belief.

In the book, a lot of racial stereotypes are found because of the fact that, in that time period, equality was not a thing. So for that reason, the author decided to discuss racism along with other things based on this time period. One example from the novel is the

The symbolized inferior butterfly has been killed by a more superior human. Killing a butterfly doesn’t usually come to people as a huge occurrence but this really is a small event turned major because it alters the future timeline. The theme of this story is a metaphor on society because in the post-world war era this was an important message, one action from a high ranking official, or even a small person doing a dangerous deed could most definitely cause panic and have far greater impact on society, just as the two World Wars did.

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

In conclusion, In the Time of the Butterflies, is a very touching and breathtaking book that embedded the historical event into a chronological story that showed the symbolic and thematic topics that occurred in the time periods the book was set in which was from 1930’s-1990’s where Dede was telling the

In David Hwang’s play, M. Butterfly, the story covers the superior attitude that Western white men hold toward Eastern oriental women which is shown through Rene Gallimard’s experiences. Throughout the story, Gallimard constantly brings up his favorite play, M. Butterfly, where an oriental woman, Butterfly, gives up and loses everything including her life for the white man she loves, Pinkerton, and despite Butterfly’s efforts, Pinkerton ends up marrying another woman causing Butterfly to commit suicide. Many white men enjoy this play because it portrays white men to look superior and gives them the assumption that oriental women would do and give up anything for a white man. Gallimard is also one of the white men who believe they are superior to oriental women and that no matter what he does, an oriental woman would never leave his side. Gallimard 's belief of racial superiority is what led him to his control over Song as if Gallimard was Pinkerton and Song was his Butterfly, this fantasy that Gallimard created for himself was false because in reality, Gallimard was the Butterfly and Song was the Pinkerton.

stereotyped for so long as being inferior. In addition, I feel that the reason why

there to spread the word of their god, but are being mocked while they do.

Stereotyping is a normal part of every one’s life. Humans, by nature, classify things. We name animals and classify them by common characteristics but stereotyping can have negative repercussions, and everyone does it. In a recent study it was proven that everyone has an unconscious need to stereotype (Paul). In Junteenth and The Invisible man, Ralph Ellison argues that stereotyping can cause mayhem by making the people become something they are not.

“We the Animals” by Justin Torres, takes place in an upstate New York town with three half breed brothers, their Puerto Rican father along with their white mother. Their parents were overworked and absent from the kid’s lives’ most of time and lack to provide food, companionship and safety. Throughout the book, Torres uses brief, evocative descriptions to create a picture that can interpret hidden meanings from a child’s perspective. Not to mention he describes his characters with animal-like qualities, animals such as, raccoons, geese, and wolfs.

Maxine Kingston's Making of More Americans like Amy Tan's Mother Tongue has been a controversial addition to Asian American literature. The writer has tried to answer the critical question of Chinese American identity and hence been criticized for adopting an orientalist framework to win approval of the west. Similarly Rendezvous by Frank Chin and Mother Tongue by Amy Tan also speak of a culture that neatly fits the description of the "Other" in the orientalist framework. It appears alien, remote and immensely degrading to women who were treated like non-human beings by Chinese chauvinistic society. However things changed for the generation of Chinese that grew up in the US or at least that is what authors wants us to believe.

The media is often the only form of culture that many Americans are subjected to. Consequently, many stereotypes are formed from that medium. These stereotypes include the interfering Asian American woman that cannot keep her nose out of other people?s business. The Asian woman is also supposedly sexually active, exotic, overly feminine and eager to please. This character is termed the ?China Doll,? and appears countless times in popular movies. Hollywood tends to characterize Asian women as prostitutes, yet fails to portray the hardships these women face such as trying to support their families. Asian American women are also depicted as passive and indecisive, and often times are treated as though they want to have sex with white men, even when they are verbally not agreeing. ?Dragon Lady? refers to an Asian