“So that happened … ” said David Henry Hwang, speaking of an incident that put the award-winning playwright in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
On Nov. 29, 2016, Hwang was walking down the street near his home in Brooklyn, when he felt a pain in the back of his neck, as if he had been struck.
Feeling unsteady, he placed his hand on his neck and only then realized he had been stabbed — an unknown assailant had severed his vertebral artery. From his days in Boy Scouts as a Chinese American kid growing up in San Gabriel, he knew to put pressure on the wound, and, after leaving a note at home for his wife and daughter, walked himself to the hospital. He lost nearly a third of his blood and drifted in and out of consciousness.