"M. Butterfly": Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity

In David Henry Hwang's Tony award-winning play M. Butterfly, Broadway audiences encounter a dazzling spectacle, in which a tale of seemingly mistaken gender identities and delusions perpetuated over decades occasions a richly textured production moving in and around the spaces of global politics, gender and racial identities, and the power relations inevitably present in what we call "love." A close examination of M. Butterfly has profound implications for our assumptions about identity, including anthro-