Finding the voice to speak "The Woman Warrior" consists of five stories which focuses on five women: Kingston's long-dead aunt, "No-Name Woman"; a mythical female warrior, Fa Mu Lan; Kingston's mother, Brave Orchid; Kingston's aunt, Moon Orchid; and finally Kingston herself. Based on her mother's stories, which are integrated with Kingston's imagination, "The Woman Warrior" reveals her past childhood experiences, and explores her struggle to reconcile her Chinese heritage with her American identity. It is only at the very end that Kingston realizes that, through her writing, she can express her concern about the unfairness toward the voiceless Chinese women. In the beginning of the first chapter, Kingston has made the theme of the …show more content…
This can be seen from omission of male characters among the five stories of the book. This kind of thing is unspeakable and it shows that Kingston's willingness to break the silence. Another example is when her aunt was found that she had committed adultery, not just her aunt suffered the punishment, but also the whole family. "We could hear [the villagers] in the kitchen breaking our bowls and banging the pots. They overturned the great waist-high earthenware jugs; duck eggs, pickled fruits, vegetables burst out and mixed in acrid torrents." It clearly shows how women's reputations are closely linked with their families. Kingston feels that there is a need for her to voice this out. Being an American Chinese, Kingston is not able to forget that this kind of thing could have happened. Since she is effectively forbidden from talking about it with anyone, therefore writing it down as a memoir and telling something which is supposed not to tell publicly, can be considered as Kingston's rebellion against the old Chinese customs and the traditions. And that is one of the reasons that she shows sympathy to her aunt since her aunt unintentionally broke a Chinese tradition which is what Kingston intended to do. Also, although the story is named as "No Name Woman", by writing down her aunt's story, Kingston has actually given this silence woman a voice. However, surprisingly, it also takes a long while for
In “No Name Woman”, Maxine Kingston’s ancestral line serves as a life lesson, whereas in “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”, Alice Walker inherits culture and hope. Kingston recounts the first time hearing of her aunt “who killed herself” due to the fact that she was pregnant, and “could not have been pregnant… because her husband had been gone for years”; the mom adds a reminder: “Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you were never born”. Kingston’s aunt disrespected the honor of her family and her village by her lack of faith to her husband, and creating another person dependent on the village for food, which is always scarce. Her ancestry and aunt serve as a lesson to always respect family and their well being, or risk being forgotten
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s essay “No Name Woman,” Kingston speculates the life of her deceased aunt from an anecdote her mother tells her. Kingston’s aunt is never discussed and is essentially dead to the family and village since she was impregnated by a man other than her husband. As a result, the village raided the family’s home, killed their livestock, and destroyed dinnerware to show Kingston’s aunt a fraction of the betrayal she had caused the town. Kingston’s version of the story retells her aunt being coerced to pursue a new man other than her husband that ends in an unplanned pregnancy. Killing herself, Kingston’s aunt tries to end the consistent bombardment of rejection and humiliation that her sins have caused her by jumping into the village well. To conclude, Kingston states she is haunted by her aunt’s ghost and the Chinese people fear being dragged into the well as a substitute.
In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston blurs fiction and reality using a poetic, singsong writing style, blending sentences together using sentence structure and diction. She also relies heavily on symbols to reveal inner conflict that she had while growing up Chinese American, trying to determine what was authentically Chinese and what was illusion.
* Innocent Child Voice: Ethos is appealed through this ‘innocent child voice’ which is uncorrupted and honest. Creates a sense of innocence and truth which is desperate to be heard. Develops a sympathetic appeal and demands the audience’s attention.
Paul Keating’s speech ‘funeral service of the unknown Australian soldier’ and Noel Pearson’s speech ‘an Australian history for us all’ have developed and expressed ideas using language appropriate to their audience, purpose and form. Despite the fact, it is fundamentally the speaker’s skills in the construction of the speech that determine its decisive success.
Throughout the novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the past is incorporated into the present through talk-stories combined into each chapter. Kingston uses talk-stories, to examine the intermingling of Chinese myths and lived experiences. These stories influence the life of the narrator as the past is constantly spoken about from the time she is young until the novel ends and she becomes an adult. Kingston incorporates two cultures. She is not a direct recipient of Chinese culture, but she has her own sense of talk-story, that she learns from her mother, which tells the old Chinese stories with a sense of myth, in a new American way. This is a way of weaving two cultures together, bringing the Chinese past into her present American life.
In “No Name Woman,” the theme of silence starts with the elementary words of the memoir stating you must not tell anyone. This statement is ironic because Kingston is in fact telling everyone, giving voice to Chinese customs and the lives that are foregone. As written in her memoir, she states, “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born.” (Deshazer 308). It is especially notable and ironic that the memoir begins with the phrase “You must not tell anyone.” Her effort in No Name Woman is to write about that which is never said; her unnamed dead aunt, and the outrageous behaviors in her mother’s Chinese village. Kingston was not necessarily silenced direct by a male figure; however, the words said by her mother “You must not tell anyone” is a representation of Kingston father’s authorization voice through her mother’s explanation. Kingston’s effort is also about discovering a voice, as both a Chinese-American
Maxine Kingston in “The Women Warrior” presents a traditional Chinese society that anticipates women not to decide what is best for them all by themselves. Kingston creates a woman who goes beyond this ritual culture constraint and who take up
The theme of “voiceless woman” throughout the book “the woman warrior” is of great importance. Maxine Kingston narrates several stories in which gives clear examples on how woman in her family are diminished and silenced by Chinese culture. The author not only provides a voice for herself but also for other women in her family and in her community that did not had the opportunity to speak out and tell their stories.
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is the story of a girl whose mother advises her daughter on different aspects of being a proper woman. The mother has antiquated even repressive ideas about what a woman is supposed to be. The mother focuses on two main categories in her guidance, social manners and domesticity. “The mother does most of the talking; she delivers a long series of instructions and warnings to the daughter, who twice responds but whose responses go unnoticed by the mother” (Short stories). First, she defends herself against what her mother argues she has done,
Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography, The Woman Warrior, features a young Chinese-American constantly searching for "an unusual bird" that would serve as her impeccable guide on her quest for individuality (49). Instead of the flawless guide she seeks, Kingston develops under the influence of other teachers who either seem more fallible or less realistic. Dependent upon their guidance, she grows under the influence of American and Chinese schools and the role models of Brave Orchid, Fa Mu Lan, and Moon Orchid. Her education by these counselors consequently causes her to abandon her search for an escort, the bird to be found somewhere in the measureless sky,
In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticity, and the cultivation of identity. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by writing interpretations of her mother, Brave Orchid’s, “talk-story”. Brave Orchid’s talk-story is a form
The Voices is directed by Marjane Satrapi and written by Michael R. Perry released in 2015. The movie was focusing on the importance of mental illness, crime and even romance. It touches comedy to horror. There were mixed reviews in the public getting both good and bad reception.
As part of the first generation of Chinese-Americans, Maxine Hong Kingston writes about her struggle to distinguish her cultural identity through an impartial analysis of her aunt’s denied existence. In “No Name Woman,” a chapter in her written memoirs, Kingston analyzes the possible reasons behind her disavowed aunt’s dishonorable pregnancy and her village’s subsequent raid upon her household. And with a bold statement that shatters the family restriction to acknowledge the exiled aunt, Kingston states that, “… [she] alone devote pages of paper to her [aunt]...” With this premeditated declaration, Kingston rebelliously breaks the family’s cultural taboo to
Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience that IF they choose to support a children’s charity, to support St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.