93distinction of fiction to close readings of Shake-
speare and T. S. Eliot. Though both his nonfiction
and poetry have garnered academic critical atten-
tion, his novels have generated the most sustained
criticism.
Bibliography
Dasenbrock, Reed W. Review of The Triple Mirror of
the Self by Zulfikar Ghose. World Literature Today
66, no. 4 (Autumn 1992): 785–786.
Ghose, Zulfikar. “Zulfikar Ghose: An Interview,” by
Chelva Kanaganayakam. Twentieth Century Lit-
erature 32, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 169–186.
Zach Weir
Golden Child David Henry Hwang (1998)
On one level, DAVID HENRY HWANG’s two-act play,
Golden Child, dramatizes what the playwright
sees as a moment of triumphant family history:
his great-grandfather’s conversion to Christianity
in China at the turn of the 20th century, inspir-
ing irreversible changes for the family. In “Bring-
ing up Child,” Hwang’s introduction to the play in
the published text, Hwang writes that the play is to
an extent “an American playwright’s act of ances-
tor worship.” In the play, Hwang indeed celebrates
the achievements of his family—in particular, the
proto-feminist refusal of his grandmother to have
her feet bound—but he also criticizes the passiv-
ity with which Chinese communities accepted the
influx of Western ideas in the early 20th century.
James Lapine directed the premiere of Golden
Child at the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare
Festival on November 17, 1996. After some rewrit-
ing, the play made its way to Broadway, where it
ran at the Longacre Theatre from April 2, 1998.
James Lapine continued to direct the show; Julyana
Soelistyo starred as Eng Ahn, the character based
explicitly on Hwang’s maternal grandmother. In
the play, Eng Ahn is the long-suffering 10-year-old
daughter of Eng Tieng-Bin, the character based on
Hwang’s great-grandfather. She is long-suffering
because she has to endure the conflicting atten-
tions of her father’s three wives. The eldest wife,
Siu-Yong, is particularly demanding, and is the
source of much of the play’s satire on early 20th-
century Chinese mores. She insists that Eng Ahn
must have her feet kept bound in order, ironically,
to become Westernized, to become as bad as the
white “monkeys and devils” with whom Tieng-
Bin now trades. When Eng Ahn complains about
the pain and unseemly smell that the bindings are
causing her, Siu-Yong replies, with an unknowing
paradox, “No one ever said that feminine beauty
was pretty.” Siu-Yong later complains that the spir-
its of long-deceased family ancestors are angry
because of Eng Ahn’s rebellious insistence on re-
moving her foot bindings. By then, Siu-Yong has
succumbed to opium, claiming that it makes her
stronger, but revealing, unwittingly, that her sexual
libido has been quashed by the debilitating poppy.
Discredited and ignored by the end of the first
act, Siu-Yong can only watch, infuriated, as Tieng-
Bin announces that his daughter—the “Golden
Child”—shall be the first female member of the
family not to have her feet bound: “Remove her
bindings. Now!” he commands.
If the first act celebrates the discontinuation
of an undesirable Chinese traditional practice,
the second act is more elegiac in its depiction of a
changing culture. Under the influence of a rather
characterless, tea- and pastry-loving missionary,
Reverend Anthony Baines, Tieng-Bin converts to
Christianity, defeating the more ludicrous super-
stitions and reactionary repressiveness of Chinese
spirit-worship. The problem is that Tieng-Bin
seems to be motivated by rather earthy, practi-
cal matters. He embraces the notion of Christian
monogamy to avoid the problems caused by his
ever-bickering three wives. The entire family’s
conversion to Christianity, at his insistence, is
marred with an alarming violence as well. Siu-
Yong—whose adherence to old religious notions
now seems principled and sincere—seeks to retain
the ancestor-worshiping tradition, but Tieng-Bin
smashes the picture of her parents, causing her
considerable distress, and replaces it with a cruci-
fix. While benefits have come from the cessation of
certain aspects of Chinese traditions, the transition
to Christianity seems hasty, all-encompassing, and
rather violently enforced by the patriarchal Tieng-
Bin. At the play’s end, which is set in the presentGolden Child 93