Patriarchy In The Woman Warrior

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.

Throughout many portions of The Woman Warrior, silence becomes a big theme and develops with the many stories told in each chapter. For the narrator, the concept of silence means not having an identity because not speaking means not having a say as a woman. However, as the book moves on, she becomes aware of the several negative factors that are associated with claiming independence and doing things differently in a Chinese community. Furthermore, the idea of silence is also hooked up to cross-cultural problems in Chinese culture such as hiding a person's name to hide their identity. Many individuals go by new names when their lives evolve or change and guard their real names with silence. Overall, the mention of silence refers to the hiding

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

Silence, Identity, and Naming! Some may feel that when someone says silence they’re automatically only referring to someone not speaking. But, that isn’t the case. Silence has so many different meanings. Silence can be within community, within religion and even within the relationship of a loved one.

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, a brilliant writer, wrote the award winning book The Woman Warrior. This book describes “A Girlhood Among Ghosts” which is Hong Kingston’s life intertwined with morals, analogies, metaphors, conflictions, and a truly relatable struggle: being able to fit in with the world or people around you. Maxine Hong Kingston describes her life in a vague manner, and adds a small amount of fiction that is found in the book in the form of stories, and folktales; these small, but very vital editions keep the reader captivated, entertained and fascinated with the story. Hong Kingston describes her struggles in fitting in with both American and Chinese culture. She also describes how hard it was for her to transition from one culture

Maxine Hong Kingston once said, “I 've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories. This quote expresses Kingston’s fervor for writing and storytelling outside of her short story “White Tigers from the Woman Warrior”, which emphasizes the importance of literature, which is her art, by retelling her own childhood as the “fairy tale” of the Woman Warrior, Fa Mu Lan, and connecting it back to her own life. The introductory paragraphs, coupled with the word carving scene and the concluding final paragraphs, evoke Fa Mu Lan and present Maxine’s life as analogous to Fa Mu Lan’s life story. While it is understood that they did not know each other, Maxine complicates this “relationship”, for lack of a better word, by using a first-person narrative as opposed to a third-person narrative while retelling the “fairy tale”, which in turn complicates subjectivity of Maxine, and the relationship between Maxine and Fa Mu Lan. Moreover, the words in the word carving scene in the middle of the “fairy tale” are double symbols of suffering and of perfect filiality, which is a trait common in Chinese culture. By and large, these early on passages, and each section from there on, and the word cutting scene, utilize the literary devices of point of view and central symbol to influence the audience to acknowledge Maxine 's claim that Fa Mu Lan is her model, and that she, Maxine, is fruitful in taking after her case since they both have words "at their backs."

Kingston begins The Woman Warrior by writing a story which started with her mother insisting that she “must not tell anyone...what I am about to tell you.” (Kingston 3). Kingston’s first written words are a defiance of this silencing. Silence is a motif that permeates the entirety of The Woman Warrior; Kingston

Kingston, or the narrator, happens to be the most imaginative, curious, and conflicted character in The Woman Warrior. She may be the only character who knows what she wants and needs in life in order to be satisfied with her own life. Everyone else in her family keeps the never ending tradition going to not disappoint their elders. They all have misery that would have been resolved if they had done what made them happy. Temptation indulges in the urges that are not necessarily meant to be addressed. Kingston indulges in her mother’s disapproval of how to live her life in order to show that happiness can empower the traditions and stereotypes of women in life. The greater good of Kingston’s message proves that although it may seem impossible

This story is unique because Kingston actually places herself in the role of the warrior in the story; she says, “We made a sling for the baby inside my big armor, and rode back into the thickest part of the fighting. The umbilical cord flew with my red flag and made us laugh.” This depiction of her fighting while carrying her infant in her arms shows how a woman can fight and nurture at the same time. She can both give but also take lives, which is something a man is unable to do. This illustrates Kingston belief that woman are not subservient, but in some cases, better than men in some respects.

Kingston’s mother had once told her, “you must not tell anyone [about your aunt],” and yet in direct defiance, Kingston then “devote[s] pages of paper to her [aunt].”  Her actions which defy her mother’s strict order are purposely directed through her rebellious intention to do so.  Kingston argues that the emigrant generation, which consisted of her mother, had taken their culture with them because “those in the emigrant generations who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home.”  Yet raising their progeny, they must teach them what they know and understand.  Kingston therefore believes that “they must try to confuse their offspring as well, who, I suppose, threaten them in similar ways – always trying to get things straight, always trying to name the

Through this written piece of work, I want to examine the ways in which the dominant ideas of gender and war, from a Feminist perspective. I will be contributing an understanding to the role of the Kurdish female fighters in the field of war and politics, that have broken the taboos of gender roles within the community, and the national movement. The concept of gender, war, and conflict has lightened the issue of women in war. The image of war is associated to masculinity, and in many cases women are not welcomes in the field of war, as “she is exposed as a victim of war by drawing the idea of women being helpless (Sjoberg, 2014, p. 10).” Laura Sjoberg; Gender, War, and Conflict, states that “war-making and war-fighting have been traditionally