"Fiction and Autobiography: Spatial Form in The Golden Cangue' and The Woman Warrior," in Modern Chinese Women Writers: Critical Appraisals, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1989, pp. 25-43.

In the following excerpt, the authors assert that spatial form in Chang's novella The Golden Cangue indicates a blending of two genres, fiction and autobiography.

The Golden Cangue may be readily considered in terms of traditional Western characteristics of fiction. It is a long, novella length, work of the imagination, a portrait of a whole complete world, which may be approached through a study of character, narrative point of view and structure. Qiqiao's [Ch'i-ch'iao's] brilliance, cruelty and insecurity are uniformly present throughout the story, marking her as a "flat" static character, whereas her daughter, Chang'an, is a "round" dynamic personality. Initially an innocent naive girl with a capacity for selfless love, she emerges as the "spit and image" of her mother who...