The Woman Warrior Summary

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.

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 first documented Chinese woman to arrive in the United States was Afong Moy, in 1834. She was brought by white people to be displayed in the American Museum. Dressed in Chinese clothing, she was meant to display Chinese customs, manners, and lifestyles, showing the Americans how different a “celestial lady” looked from a Western woman. This spirit of Westerners viewing Chinese people as separate from themselves would go on to isolate Chinese immigrants as they continued to immigrate to America. The Chinese would continue to be thought of as inferior, or part of an “other” group by white settlers. Chinese women in particular were fetishized and demeaned -- looked upon as a whole as prostitutes -- when in reality they played many different roles in society and in

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.

A horrific taboo occurs twice in the novel The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, infanticide. Infanticide is the act of murdering an infant, specifically the person’s own child. When this situation occurs in the writing, there is a different significance to Chinese culture than the other. What is the context behind this cruel act in Kingston’s book about tieing ancient Chinese tales with her own life? Both times infanticide is brought up a powerful emotion develops in the reader, such as grief or anger. The main purpose of infanticide in the novel is to force the reader to think what is right and wrong.

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,

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

     Women have played a tremendous role in many countries' armed forces from the past to the present. Women have thoroughly integrated into the armed forces; all positions in the armed forces should be fully accessible to women who can compete with men intellectually and physically.

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.

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.

Women did not have any power in Chinese culture. Kingston describes how a man intimidates her aunt by telling her that he will beat and kill her if she tells anyone. It shows men dominance over women because the man is making Kingston’s aunt do anything he wants. In paragraph fifteen, “women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil” (623). It adds to how women in China did not have any voice and were supposed to comply with any thing men said. Women had to be protective mothers. Kingston states, “as a last act of responsibility: She would protect this child as she had protect its father… mothers who love their children take them along” (629). This quote means that women would protect their children and always look out for the best interest for them. Women had to provide food for their family and their gods. In paragraph thirteen, “she plants vegetables gardens rather than lawns; she carries the odd-shaped tomatoes home from the fields and eats food left for the gods” (622). It shows one duty of women in Chinese culture and the role they had to follow.