Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

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

Furthermore, Kingston uses her aunt as a symbol or model of what the Chinese fear becoming. Paragraph 21 states “…the feelings playing about in one’s guts [must] not be turned into action,” which means the Chinese believe fantasies and sinful behavior must be suppressed instead of expressed. Kingston’s aunt broke this rule by digging a freckle out of her face, ripping stray hairs out of her head, and spending large amounts of time fixating on her looks in order to seduce a man as stated in paragraphs 26 and

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.

The narrator of Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl, who is implied to be a mother, reveals much of her worldview through the story’s dialogue. In this dialogue, she both instructs and scolds her a girl who is implied to be her daughter. The instructions that the mother imparts to her daughter in Girl offer a deep insight into what the mother believes is good for her. In teaching these lessons, the mother is preparing her daughter for what she believes is her daughter’s future. Thus, these lessons are setting the expectations that she has for her daughter within her world.

A warrior woman is never accepted in a society. Marlow starts to describe the women in Congo, however, they are different from the European women. He starts by saying, “She carried her head high… Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow…” (132). The women in Congo were confident and did not pay close attention to what men had to say. Regardless of what is happening to their people and country they still manage to become courageous and leaders. Then a man nervously whispers to Marlow, “If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her” (133). It shows that if a woman were to show her abilities to the world, people will be concerned and will not know what to expect. The book also suggests that women

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

Kingston?s mother spoke of the aunt only as a lesson to her daughter. "Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on." (Kingston, 321) Kingston learned, from her mother, that her aunt committed suicide because she shamed herself, her family and her village by becoming pregnant from a man other than her husband. Kingston, a young woman at the time, was told, "Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don?t humiliate us. You wouldn?t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful." (Kingston, 321) This sounds like a threat, not a lesson for the wise. What could Kingston have possibly learned from her mother?s story? Perhaps, we will not love you if you do not follow our family rules.

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'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 mother-daughter relationship is a common topic throughout many of Jamaica Kincaid's novels. It is particularly prominent in Annie John, Lucy, and Autobiography of my Mother. This essay however will explore the mother-daughter relationship in Lucy. Lucy tells the story of a young woman who escapes a West Indian island to North America to work as an au pair for Mariah and Lewis, a young couple, and their four girls. As in her other books—especially Annie John—Kincaid uses the mother-daughter relationship as a means to expose some of her underlying themes.

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.

Cultures can shape the identities of individuals. Kingston identity was shape by Chinese and Chinese American culture. "No Name Woman," begins with a talk-story, about Kingston’ aunt she never knew. The aunt had brought disgrace upon her family by having an illegitimate child. In paragraph three, “she could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband had been gone for years” (621). This shows that Kingston’s aunt had an affair with someone and the result was her pregnancy. She ended up killing herself and her baby by jumping into the family well in China. After hearing the story, Kingston is not allowed to mention her aunt again. The ideas of gender role-play an important role in both cultures. Kingston in her story “No Name