In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang presents a somewhat reversed story
             of Puccini's adaptation of David Belasco's Madame Butterfly. Indeed,
             Bernard Boursicot, the French diplomat in Beijing and Shi Peipu, a Chinese
             opera singer, are the rather strange protagonists of a "psychosexual
             drama"[1], where homophobia and racism, as well as cultural mis-perceptions
             In my opinion, the book itself and much of what lies beneath the
             lines are much harder to grasp than what we see at first glance. The
             cultural misconceptions that the Westerners have about Asia may appear as a
             racial sexism obsession about the ideal Asian woman that the Westerners
             Indeed, the French diplomat sustains all along that in his twenty
             years affair with the Chinese opera singer, he never knew that the
             respective person was a man. How could this be'! Well, in my opinion, the
             general idea that the author suggests is that the prejudice Westerners have
             is sometimes so embedded in their minds that they fail to see the very
             reality of things. The issue is not whether the diplomat had accepted his
             homosexuality or not, but the underlying message of this.
             In Things fall apart, by Chinua Achebe, we are facing the general,
             great misconception that white populations came about when they colonized
             Africa. The fact that the Africans tribes and their people are seen as
             savages, with no form of cultures, of ethics or of intratribal laws, seems
             to be what the book is all about. However, it is my belief and my
             impression that this was only a motive for the author to describe a
             troubled personality, no lesser than any of the modern Western
             personalities we are so proud of, an African tribe with a social life and a
             social regulation that may, at times, surpass even the Western society and
             an African tribe that is rich in traditions, beliefs, actions and
             ...