The Woman Warrior Essay

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.

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.

Elaine Potter Richardson, more famously known as Jamaica Kincaid, is recognized for her writings that suggest depictions of relationships between families, mainly between a mother and daughter, and her birth place, Antigua, an island located in the West Indies. She is also familiarized with Afrocentrism and feminist point of views. Kincaid’s work is filled heavily with visual imagery that produces a mental picture in readers that helps them connect stronger to the reading. An example of this really shines through in her short story piece, “Girl.” This short story describes the life of a lower class woman living in the West Indies, and also incorporates thick detailing between the relationship between her and her mother. Jamaica Kincaid structures the story as if her mother is speaking to her. She writes broad, but straight to the point, allowing readers to imagine to picture her experience. Kincaid uses visual imagery and repetition consistently throughout “Girl” to reveal the theme and tone of the story; conflictual affair between a mother and daughter.

Having two identities is like mastering the dragon ways. In Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 The Woman Warrior, she retells about her autobiography in a fictional way and greatly magnifies the art of storytelling. Maxine introduces with the story about her unknown aunt and then transitioning to her favorite story about a woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan. Then she explores about her mother’s past, sister, and interaction with herself. She truly connects every part of the story and creates an identity for herself. The dragon passage illuminates Maxime’s identity and brings her stories into a whole where one must understand one part to find person’s identity.

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

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.

The book, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is a memoir about a girl named Kingston and her past experiences and stories that involve myths and beliefs that her mother talks about throughout her life. In Chapter 1, when her mother told Kingston about an aunt she never knew she had, Kingston promised her mother that she “must not tell anyone” what her mother was about to tell her (Kingston 7). Her mother tells her that Kingston’s “father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well” and they all live as if she has never been born since she was a disgrace to her family (Kingston 7). Kingston writes this memoir as a break through as she struggles to have a voice since she’s been silenced all her life. Chapter 3 talks about

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."

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,

“She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman”(20).These are the true and unforgettable words of Kingston, the main character in Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir, The Woman Warrior. The author portrays her memoir as an act of rebellion through using the redemption of her aunt, "No Name Woman", the opposition to Chinese culture, and the discovery of Kingston’s inner-self.

The Story “Woman Warrior” written by Maxine Hong Kingston in 1975, is a great representation of what woman are characterized as in regards to being submissive or rebellious in their society, and how, even though they are harshly treated, the women fight back instead of letting themselves be subjugated, it exemplifies the hardships women face in their lives. In The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Author Maxine Hong Kingston brings to the table a bunch of allegorical and life stories that bring upon the hardships in which she, herself, must deal with the sexist ideology and prejudice growing up young Chinese American girl. Throughout her life she was called such racist and stereotypical names such as “gook” and is repeatedly told such chauvinist Chinese sayings like “girls are maggots in the rice” by her own flesh and blood; her parents. Maxine Hong Kingston feels isolated from modern American culture and from the patriarchal Chinese culture.

When it comes to combat assignments and the needs of the military, men take precedence over all other considerations, including career prospects of female service members. Female military members have been encouraged to pursue opportunities and career enhancement within the armed forces, which limit them only to the needs and good of the service due to women being not as “similarly situated” as their male counterparts when it comes to strength or aggressiveness, and are not able to handle combat situations.

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 Americanism was contended by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the importance of storytelling in the evolution of her identity and relates her method of exploring self-discovery to the dominant themes about silence and the translation of tradition. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by performing her interpretation of talk-story. Consequently, there is inaccuracy in Kingston’s storytelling, which cultivates the sense that Kingston is reshaping and untangling the tales of her ancestral tradition to fulfill her personal narrative about identity. Kingston fictionalizes her memoir through storytelling in order to convey the thematic significance of defying silence, breaking from objectivity, and the translation of Chinese traditions to America.