Identity Plot In The Woman Warrior

Identify and describe two conflicts in the story. Explain how the protagonist responds throughout the story and what his or her response reveals about him or her. Write in complete sentences.

These expectations increased when she was in the presence of “great power, [her] mother talking story” (20). In one particular situation, the narrator recalls her mother singing about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. Although her mother expected her daughter to become a wife or a slave, the narrator had a different idea; she would “grow up a woman warrior” (20). As a young girl, she said that she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began” (19). This is the case in “White Tigers.” The narrator’s dream-state takes readers into the mind of a girl who attempts to please her mother and entire family by becoming a woman warrior. This is possibly an attempt to subside much of the harsh ridicule she receives from her mother due to cultural differences. Although this is a key factor in her early childhood, she learns to block out these criticisms as she grows older.

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.

1. Who are the most important characters? Identify the protagonist/antagonist/ Write down important information and characteristics about each one.

Being an author of several praised works, Maxine Hong Kingston has been deemed a noteworthy American writer since her first book debuted. Her unique style and interesting blend of myth and truth in memoir form garnered her international attention and won her several awards. Kingston’s works have put heavy emphasis on her family history and her experiences as a Chinese-American, so it is no surprise that she has been received well by many and misunderstood by others at the same time. A discussion on one of her most popular works, “No Name Woman”, and a look at the different ways Kingston’s works have been interpreted should reveal how literature can have different meanings depending on what one is looking for.

She can never fully assimilate to the American way because others cannot over look her different cultural heritage. However, she cannot fully revert back to her Japanese culture. She has lost touch to the language and traditions. Her linkage to Japanese culture go back so far that the only remnants of her Japanese identity can only be identified through blood. Trying to find an escape from this scrutiny, Nishio seeks refuge in art. However, coming from the west coast, she remains an outsider when she comes to the east coast. The artistic styles differ on the opposing coasts, which makes it hard for Nishio to identify as one or the other. Nishio’s background puts her in the position of an outsider. Another outsider who presents her story through her memoir The Woman Warrior is Maxine Hong-Kingston. Kingston is an outsider in both the American and Chinese community. Kingston could never figure out “American-feminine” (Kingston, 204). Her Chinese blood interferes with Kingston’s potential of becoming a “true American.” The Chinese and American standards contrast one another rather than complement each other, which compiles Kingston’s hate, especially towards her Chinese

Theme of the story: The conditions of a character's life has a direct influence on how they act in the novel.

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.

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.

Maxine Hong Kingston is telling a tragedy caused by gender discrimination in her essay “No Name Woman.” She is a first generation Chinese American. Her mother consistently tells her about the Kingston family back in the Old Chinese village to remind her of her Chinese root. Kingston’s mother tells her that she has an aunt in China with a forbidden existence; they say that her father “has all brothers because it is as if she [the aunt] had never been born” (Kingston 135). In 1924, most men in this village traveled to the “gold mountain”, or the United States, to seek their fortunes. Women were left behind. Kingston’s aunt was pregnant when her husband was away for years. The villagers realized this soon; “[they] had been counting. On the

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

Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel The Woman Warrior is a series of narrations, vividly recalling stories she has heard throughout her life. These stories clearly depict the oppression of woman in Chinese society. Even though women in Chinese Society traditionally might be considered subservient to men, Kingston viewed them in a different light. She sees women as being equivalent to men, both strong and courageous.

Here the key role of “talk-story” comes to scene, an oral-narrative serving a specific purpose with which Brave Orchid, Maxine Hong Kingston’s mother, teaches her the traditions and culture of China that are to define her position in life, even though in American soil. In The Woman Warrior, this storytelling begins at the time of Kingston’s menarche with a cautionary account, “whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on” (Kingston 9), about the dangers of disregarding the unwritten cultural norms that are invested upon Asian