Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

     The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston presents the story of a girl trapped between the cultures of her surrounding environment and that which her mother and family have forced upon her. Knowing only the Chinese way of life, this girl’s mother attempts to familiarize her daughter, whom is also the narrator, with the history of their family. The mother shares this heritage through the use of stories in hopes the narrator will be prepared for her ultimate return to China, which is a life completely foreign to her own. Through these stories and the strong influence of the surrounding American culture, the narrator’s life and imagination spin off in a new direction. She is confronted by

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston depicts Fa Mulan as an inspirational, incredible, young warrior. The narrator desperately needs to have the strength and power of Fa Mulan. However, the narrator’s family follows the stereotype of the women in the kitchen and taking care of the children while the men work to financially help the family. The narrator also feels like she knows nothing about her ancestors. The narrator’s mother and her sisters, battle against ghosts, insane asylums, and suicide. The nameless aunt that Brave Orchid guilt trips, proves Brave Orchid’s old school lifestyle of the unfair and inequality of women. Brave Orchid infiltrated talk story and her life of receiving a medical degree while trying to auction her daughter

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

While categorizing each and every person living on the face of this Earth through stereotypes remains a virtually-impossible task, culture does in fact play a role in shaping humans into the people they are. Such cultural traits and customs can conflict with those of other cultures, with one prominent example being the silence of Asia contrasted with the openness of America. Maxine Hong Kingston covers these two topics in depth in her 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior, throughout which a young, insecure girl develops a voice of her own, gaining an increased appreciation for her Chinese-American heritage in the process. The world that she lives in values open communication, often causing those who internalize their feelings to struggle with establishing meaningful interpersonal connections. A character loosely based upon Kingston’s own upbringing and stories that she has heard, Maxine remains unaccepting of her true self until she manages to achieve a cultural balance, learning to respect and somewhat yield to the American value of verbal communication.

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.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” is novel composed of myths and memoirs that have shaped her life. Her mother’s talk-stories about her no name aunt, her own interpretation of Fa Mu Lan, the stories of ghosts in doom rooms and American culture have been the basis of her learning. She learned morals, truths, and principals that would be the basis of her individuality.

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 In-Between Who am I in relation to others? Imperative to answering this question, in fact the answer itself, is a personal understanding of what is “I” and what is “other”. Despite the ostensive brevity of the question, it is an especially challenging one to answer for Maxine Hong Kingston. Throughout her memoir, Woman Warrior, she constantly struggles to define her “I”, or rather her “self”. In this autobiography she attempts to “write [herself] into being” (Gates 57) as an American by reconciling her Chinese heritage with her experience growing up as a second-generation American.

Conflicts of duality the narrator faces include, of course, her failures to live up to her ideal self already specified, as well as the duality of being a Chinese American. Further conflicts faced by the narrator include the many incredible ghost stories the narrator is told by her mother as if they were fact. The reconciliation of the narrator’s dual identities, in addition to the other conflicts of duality, is a thematic knot that slowly unfurls throughout The Woman Warrior. The narrator of The Sympathizer likewise faces issues of duality; however, instead of the dualities of the narrator’s identity being slowly built throughout the novel, The Sympathizer presupposes the narrator’s dual identity. The narrator does not present his duality as some knot that must be untied, but rather as a bow on a gift, presented proudly and shamelessly to the reader.

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,

Maxine Hong Kingston's “The Woman Warrior” was a wonderful book. It is intense, fierce and disturbing but very original. I was intrigued by the title of the book: “Memoirs of a girlhood among Ghosts”. She grow up around the ghosts from her past and present. “The Ghosts” represent the people she grew up around which were the Americans, but throughout the book there is mentions of ghosts from her past. The first chapter of the book I found to be the most enjoyable. It introduced all major themes of the book. Including: Chinese culture and tradition, Women’s voice, and silence. The book itself focuses on the life of Chinese- American immigrants. Many believe that the book is influential but others cast a dark view on Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel. My impression of the book is that it takes a different angle on being brought up a second generation immigrant. I think that the use of the story of the aunt and Fa Mulan gives light to the turmoil of the search for self-identity. This exploration of

Maxine Kingston wrote The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Girlhood Amongst Ghosts as a non-fictional story that relates the common Chinese folktales (or “talk stories” as she calls them) she was familiar with from her youth combined with her own personal experiences as a Chinese-American. Each chapter is given to a separate woman who influenced Kingston’s life in a memorable way. The theme of silence and voice comes up frequently throughout the text, but is increasingly evident in the first page, as the novel opens up with the narrator speaking, “you must not tell anyone” (Kingston 1).

``The woman warrior`` written by Maxine Hong Kingston is a collection of memoirs. It has a hybrid form: it is a myth, fiction, as well as autobiography. ``The woman warrior`` is a book about finding and discovering yourself in the circumstances of a Chinese family and an American upbringing, always fluctuating between the two worlds, speculating about your true self.

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