David Henry Hwang, the Tony award-winning playwright who was slashed in the neck by an unknown assailant near his Fort Greene home in late November, nabbed a corner of the NY Times Men's Style section to recount the shocking chain of events—from the sidewalk, to his foyer dripping blood, to a gurney at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
In an essay titled, accurately, "The Time I Got Stabbed In The Neck," we learn from Hwang that his attacker, still at large, managed to sever Hwang's vertebral artery. According to the playwright, the same injury has been known to cause strokes and permanent loss of feeling.
"I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have survived with no long-term damage," he writes.
Hwang, 58, was walking home laden with groceries on South Portland Street between Lafayette and DeKalb Avenues around 8:50 p.m. on Sunday, November 29th when he was attacked, according to the NYPD.
In the playwright's own words:
Carrying my groceries around 9 p.m., I crossed onto my block, about a dozen doors from my home. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt as if someone had hit me on the back of my head. I yelled an expletive. Turning around, I saw the silhouette of someone running away across the street. I wasn’t going to take off to pursue my assailant, so I decided to continue home.
But I found that I couldn't walk steadily and veered, first into a wall, then into a parked car. I placed my hand to my neck, and it came away covered in blood.
Normally, in the case of a severed artery, a surgeon will intervene to cap it. But because Hwang's injury was so close to his skull, there was an apparent risk of brain damage.
Instead, the following day Hwang went under the knife of a Mount Sinai neuroendovascular surgeon for more than four hours. The procedure was not a a simple one. As Hwang writes: "...the surgical team performed minimally invasive surgery, navigating through my arterial system from my groin to the severed artery, which they closed off with over a dozen coils and vascular plugs."
Hwang also details the ongoing investigation into his attack, which he believes may have been a hate crime. He references attacks on Asian American women that proliferated last year, and the slashing, days after he was attacked, of a 16-year-old Chinese girl in Queens.
"I have since learned that Asians are seen as easy targets because of perceived language barriers and a reluctance to report crimes," Hwang writes.
The NYPD believes that the November 29th attack was perpetrated by someone with no personal connection to Hwang himself. Officials released a grainy surveillance still of a suspect in December—an individual with his or her back turned to the camera.
