Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston's novel, The Woman Warrior is a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories that chronicles her childhood in California. It gives the reader a feeling of how it feels like to be a Chinese American girl growing up with traditional parents in a world that is quite different from theirs. Throughout the novel, both she and her mother refer to the outside world as "ghosts." The subtitle given to the book is Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. To figure out the meaning behind this subtitle, one has to try to see what

In The Woman Warrior, Kingston develops the motif of comparing herself to a swordswoman in order to illustrate how the talk stories of Fa Mu Lan aid her in combating the racism and oppression she faces as a Chinese woman in America through embodying the power of a woman warrior she possesses in her fantasies. Throughout the chapter White Tiger, Kingston explores the mythical story of Fa Mu Lan, placing herself in the role of the woman warrior and explaining her fantasy of living with an old man and woman, who carve the path to her success as a warrior. Later in the chapter, she contrasts Mulan's grievances to her own difficulties as a Chinese-American. Kingston ends the chapter by comparing herself to Mulan through stating,

Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of

An author writing about their personal life is fascinating because once reading the book there becomes a strong connection with the author. There are five stories told in “The Women Warrior” by Maxine Kingston. The five stories are all intertwine and goes back and forth writing about the past and the future. Kingston writes this book to share how a Chinese-American grew up in California and how her chaotic life has shaped her to become who she is. This book shows that a woman can do what they want if they believe because of the themes, symbols, and that appear in the story.

In the memoir, “The Woman Warrior”, Kingston explores the different forms of adversity faced by women. She attempts to understand and come to terms with the rituals, practices and attitudes of rural Chinese culture of her parents in order to reconcile herself to American society and, finally, to achieve her Chinese-American identity by becoming a writer. As a writer, Kingston peers into the looking glass and views other women’s stories to understand her cultural history. Being a first-generation Chinese American, she struggles to reconcile her Chinese cultural heritage with her emerging sense of herself as an American. Kingston’s search for her personal identity begins with a tale of an aunt, simply known as a no name woman, to whom the title of the first chapter refers.

Kingston comprehends that in the traditional Chinese culture women do not have voice and are seen as inferior. Kingston introduces silence in the

“The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”, by Maxine Hong Kingston is a nonfiction book about finding one's voice. Throughout the book, there are plenty of remarks to emotional and physical conflict. Kingston supplies individualized identities for these silent women.

Initial Understanding. What are your thoughts and questions about the story? You might reflect upon characters, their problems, the title, or other ideas in the story.

The Woman Warrior is a collection of memoirs written by Chinese-American author and professor, Maxine Hong Kingston. This book depicts the experiences of the Chinese people who emigrated to the United States after the Chinese Communist Revolution by combining her life story with Chinese fables called “talk-stories”. The author leads a difficult life as she tries to find a way to express herself to her unappreciative mother, who berates her for being a soft-spoken girl. Despite the fact Kingston bottles up the frustration caused by her mother, her emotions come to the surface multiple times. Throughout the book, it is evident that Kingston’s experiences, like the enduring of her mother’s criticisms and her struggle to communicate herself to

Kingston contrasts Maxine’s American education with stories told by her parents, for her edification, to demonstrate the opposing cultures found in her life. The beginning of the book starts with Maxine’s mother telling her about her ostracized aunt who had a baby with a random man instead of her husband. When the villagers raided out of discontent, her family “stood together in the middle of [their] house, in the family hall with the pictures and tables of the ancestors around [them], and looked straight ahead” (4). Maxine’s mother is implicating to Maxine that her actions don’t just affect her, but her entire lineage; that the family name is more important to protect than cherishing an individual. A recurring motif in Woman Warrior are ghosts,

In this essay, I decided not to summarize Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior since we have already done that by posting our weekly responses and since it is an open essay; also it might seem too boring for you to read the same thing again. Instead, I wanted to write more on particular subjects that Kingston had talked in the interviews.

In the essay, “No Name Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston explores why her Chinese aunt drowned herself in the family well in China. This is one of the most difficult text I have read till now, because as I read the story it gets harder for you to understand the text and the tone of it. As I read on, the paragraph ends with “All of them sent money home” (606). At first i thought they referred to as the guys who smuggled their family members but after reading few more times I found out they referred to their family members in new world. After that confusing part comes and I find out that the aunt was pregnant and I knew that there was aunt in this story but where did this come from.

“But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have”(Kingston 2520). In Maxine Kingston’s No Name Woman, there is a clear theme in her short story, and it is found in the minor details of the lines. Kingston is going against her family’s wish and is discussing her aunt. Her family wanted to keep her unnamed aunt a secret, and for a while, Maxine Kingston did.

Maxine Hong Kingston ‘The Woman warrior’ takes place in No Society Village, a medical school in Canton, and Stockton,California, where Kingston was born. The novel starts with Kingston’s paternal aunt, whom the family say’s is an embarrassment and refuses to mention the aunts name. Then Kingston starts talking about her mother, Brave Orchid, who studied in a medical school before she joined with her husband in America. In the novel Kingston mentions a lot of people that are her family, friends, heroines and more. What Kingston wants is to find who she is.

"...Point of view is... an artful treatment of the facts [in a story]...," a treatment with which the author decides who is telling the story, as well as the credibility given to the story (Macauley and Lanning 132). Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is not a story, but an autobiography of her life as a Chinese-American girl growing up in California. Although it is not a story, Kingston must decide from which point of view she is going to tell her own story. In The Woman Warrior, the author Maxine Hong Kingston writes in various points of view due to her realizing that, if she writes solely in first person, she will write an autobiography much like all others, only focusing on herself; instead,