Reconstructing East-West Disparity in David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child
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The phenomenal success of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly played a crucial role in Asian American theater. However, Hwang’s position as a successful Asian American writer was precarious due to continuous expectations from the ethnic group and his desire to move up the career ladder, even if it meant compromising his ethnic identity. The Miss Saigon affair shows the leverage of racial issues on him. He intended to aid Asian Americans, only to expose himself to harsh criticism from them. Since then, Hwang’s perspective on racial identity has been in a state of flux, and this change started to show in his later dramas. Golden Child was his second mainstream hit after M. Butterfly. Unlike M. Butterfly where he tried to deconstruct the boundary between the East and the West, Golden Child juxtaposes the two as irreconcilable sides, one of which should succumb. Golden Child finally concludes with the victory of the Western culture, which is described as essential progress in the future. Such an ending reflects his growing distance from his racial ethnicity, opposing his ending to Family Devotions (1981) where the Eastern culture wins. He strives to establish a new post-racial identity, freed from his ethnicity and thus becomes a target of criticism. But his lopsided view leaning toward the West brings him into self-subversion as a subject producing the same East-West misconceptions which he once intended to deconstruct.
Abstract
The phenomenal success of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly played a crucial role in Asian American theater. However, Hwang’s position as a successful Asian American writer was precarious due to continuous expectations from the ethnic group and his desire to move up the career ladder, even if it meant compromising his ethnic identity. The Miss Saigon affair shows the leverage of racial issues on him. He intended to aid Asian Americans, only to expose himself to harsh criticism from them. Since then, Hwang’s perspective on racial identity has been in a state of flux, and this change started to show in his later dramas. Golden Child was his second mainstream hit after M. Butterfly. Unlike M. Butterfly where he tried to deconstruct the boundary between the East and the West, Golden Child juxtaposes the two as irreconcilable sides, one of which should succumb. Golden Child finally concludes with the victory of the Western culture, which is described as essential progress in the future. Such an ending reflects his growing distance from his racial ethnicity, opposing his ending to Family Devotions (1981) where the Eastern culture wins. He strives to establish a new post-racial identity, freed from his ethnicity and thus becomes a target of criticism. But his lopsided view leaning toward the West brings him into self-subversion as a subject producing the same East-West misconceptions which he once intended to deconstruct.
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